With the luxury of a moment to think about it, my advice would be to ask her interlocutor "How will they be slashed and when?" The answer is complicated, and it's very likely he'd be unable to answer coherently and accurately. The President's executive order appears to be well-intended and, the BBC indicated in mid-May, "is much wider than previous efforts to bring down costs." HoweverAmerican Liberal woman says America is “TRASH” 🇺🇸
— Anti Left Memes (@AntiLeftMemes) June 14, 2025
“The United States is kind of trash, doesn’t treat its people well.”
Do you have any advice for her?pic.twitter.com/Easut1PYil
The wording directs US officials to make sure that deals over drug costs made by foreign countries do not result in "unreasonable or discriminatory" price hikes for Americans.
But what exactly is covered by those terms is unclear – as is the question of what measures the White House would take if "unreasonable" practices are discovered.
The White House also wants drug companies to sell more products directly to consumers - cutting out insurance companies and pharmaceutical benefit managers - and look into importing drugs from foreign countries where they are sold at lower prices. That idea has previously hit stumbling blocks over safety and trade rules.
An official said that Monday's order was the start of negotiations between the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and industry.
The order also proposed that the US be given Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status – meaning drug companies would be asked to match the lowest price for a drug abroad when selling to US consumers.
"Big pharma will either abide by this principle voluntarily or we'll use the power of the federal government to ensure that we are paying the same price as other countries," Trump told reporters.
It was unclear what mechanism the White House would use to punish drug companies that refuse to voluntarily comply.
Drug prices are very opaque, according to Alan Sager, a professor of health policy at Boston University. Drug manufacturers could easily argue that they were complying with the order by touting the price discounts that they already routinely provide on very high listed retail prices, he told the BBC.
"Will they act? Maybe. Will they claim they act? Sure," Prof Sager said….
To try to retain their profits in the US, drugs companies
could simply pull out of other nations in which they are selling their products
more cheaply, according to researchers Darius Lakdawalla and Dana Goldman at
the University of Southern California.
The researchers also said that foreign governments routinely underestimated the true value of drugs to patients, and that "shifting to a European pricing model in the US would lead to shorter, less healthy lives for Americans".
I have my doubts about that but God is in the details, and the details here don't favor a likelihood of sharply reduced drug prices. And this guy is on much shakier ground- well, quicksand- when he says Trump has "lost a billion dollars in net worth since his first Administration."
I don't know when this short, highly misleading video was made. Perhaps Trump, a terrible businessman, perhaps did lose net worth since his first Administration, when he was a private citizen rather than aa profit-seeking Chief Executive. However, Trump's wealth took off once he took office in January. In late May, Peter Baker of The New York Times reported
The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.
Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.
And Mr. Trump hosted an exclusive dinner at his Virginia
club for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency that he started days before
taking office in January. Access was openly sold based on how much money they
chipped in — not to a campaign account but to a business that benefits Mr.
Trump personally.
"Perhaps" wasn't necessary and probably was inaccurate given that
By conventional Washington standards, according to students of official graft, the still-young Trump administration is a candidate for the most brazen use of government office in American history, perhaps eclipsing even Teapot Dome, Watergate and other famous scandals.
“I’ve been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning,” said Michael Johnston, a professor emeritus at Colgate University and author of multiple books on corruption in the United States.
President Trump bought excellent, cheap insurance because
There will be no official investigations because Mr. Trump
has made sure of it. He has fired government inspectors general and ethics
watchdogs, installed partisan loyalists to run the Justice Department, F.B.I.
and regulatory agencies and dominated a Republican-controlled Congress
unwilling to hold hearings…
Moreover, he has not given it all up; in fact, he is still making money from his private business interests run by his sons, and independent estimates indicate that he has hardly sacrificed financially by entering politics. Forbes estimated Mr. Trump’s net worth at $5.1 billion in March, a full $1.2 billion higher than the year before and the highest it has ever been in the magazine’s rankings.
Yet, the truly funny- not funny- part of this guy's tweet is how horrible it is that "American Liberal woman" believes the USA is trash; a faceless, anonymous woman who is not a public figure or even an "influencer."
Qué terrible! The truly funny- not funny- part of this guy's tweet is how horrible is a young, faceless, anonymous woman who is not a public figure or even an "influencer" because she believes the USA is "trash."
Asked by Bill O'Reilly in an interview in February of 2017 about Vladimir Putin, Trump argued "there are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What, do you think? Our country's so innocent?" He didn't specify who those killers were who resembled Vladimir Putin.
Not a gaffe. On October 30, 2022, in a Truth Social post almost completely ignored and then completely forgotten (except here), Donald Trump contended "Our Country is Rigged, Crooked, and Evil." (Also, Americans are "bloated, fat, and disgusting.") Rigged and crooked? That may have been projection. But "evil?" Well, that, too.
This is not somebody who evidently believes that the USA is evil- which, some would suggest, is worse than "trash"- it is the President of the United States of America. So my larger advice for the interviewee is not to go around hating on our country, adding to the huge chasm among Americans. Donald Trump does enough of that for all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment