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“Problem” Government Just Got Big Pharma to Drop Insulin Costs
On January 20, 1981, president Ronald Reagan proclaimed during his inaugural speech that government is not the solution to our problems; “government is the problem.”
Those four words kicked off decades of libertarian, aka “neoliberal,” policies successful in convincing large swathes of Americans that government is incapable of doing anything positive, and if we just chipped away at it enough, eventually it would be off our backs, because…freedom.
Well, last week the federal government did something to make Reagan spin in his grave. So speechless are “free-market” zealots over the “deep-state” D.C. elites’ temerity, they almost couldn’t pronounce “woke.”
Among myriad guarantees in last year’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) legislation is lower prescription drug and health insurance costs. A specific provision is capping the cost of insulin prescriptions for Medicare recipients at $35.
Thanks to that, pharmaceutical giants Sanofi, Eli Lilly, and Novo Nordisk, companies that control over 90% of the global insulin market, last week announced plans to significantly slash insulin costs for private insurance as well.
Looks like that whole thing about government being “the problem” upon which the Reagan administration was predicated just…
