Biden’s war on prescription drugs

President Biden wants you to believe that his fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget will save Medicare, which will be insolvent as early as 2028, without raising costs on seniors or cutting benefits. 

If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is. 

Biden’s plan to “save” Medicare is to raise taxes and subject more drugs to government price controls. The White House boasts that the president’s $6.8 trillion budget proposal will “extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by at least 25 years.” This band-aid means that anyone under age 35, or more than one-third of the current workforce, will still face Medicare insolvency in their lifetimes. 

Even if you take the White House at its word, Biden is clearly kicking the can down the road for the next generations to deal with. This, however, is par for the course for Washington Democrats these days, particularly when it comes to budget issues; call something “free” and hope you aren’t held accountable when the bill comes due. 

Biden’s topline spending numbers also revolve around the false belief that when the government gets involved, prices drop. Rarely, if ever, is this true. The federal government is inherently worse at negotiating drug prices than the private sector; for example, to offset government-set prescription drug prices in the Inflation Reduction Act, drug companies raised the prices of nearly 1,000 other medications, proving that the government alone cannot effectively mandate private sector prices. 

Any claim that government price negotiations will automatically lead to cost savings must be greeted with skepticism. 

Further, any savings that result from this government drug pricing scheme would be more than offset by new entitlement programs that the left is pushing for, meaning none of Biden’s already inflated estimate of $307 billion in savings would be used to stabilize Medicare or given back to the taxpayer. 

Instead, the president proposes $252 billion in new taxes, driven by a rise in the Net Investment Income Tax, on America’s family-owned businesses to help subsidize our broken Medicare system. 

Seventy five percent of businessowners will face immediate financial setbacks should this plan take place, the same people who fought tooth and nail to keep their doors open during COVID-19 and are still battling high inflation and low labor force participation. Mom and Pop shops, which employ nearly half of the workforce, will inevitably be forced to raise prices, lay off workers, or both to absorb these heightened costs. 

It’s a twist of the knife that this administration thrust into the heart of small businesses on day one.  

It’s abundantly clear that this administration has no plan other than to tax, borrow and spend. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, so this approach will never work. Frustratingly, the new left appears to be willing to sacrifice anything — even lives — if it means growing the federal government’s control over our health care system. 

When Washington Democrats forced the Inflation “Reduction” Act into law, they decided that government intrusion in the health care system is more important than the millions of cancer patients who are desperately waiting on a lifesaving cure and treatment. At least 15 cures will no longer come to market due government price controls and regulations. Will that be a cure for cancer? Diabetes? Alzheimer’s? We may never know; however, two exciting new drug therapies, one for Stargardt disease, a rare eye disease that leads to vision loss, and another for blood cancers have already been suspended with company spokespersons directly citing the Inflation Reduction Act for the pause. 

Decreased investment in pharmaceutical research and development has real-world consequences. Patients waiting for a promising new drug trial to alleviate their chronic pain, or even save their life, watched that hope disappear with the flick of Biden’s wrist. You think the president would have learned from this mistake and, at a minimum, prevented any further hope from being dashed from patients.

Instead, when it comes to the Biden administration’s failures, the past is merely prologue. 

Rep. Buddy Carter is a pharmacist who sits on both the House Budget and Energy and Commerce Committees.