The latest iteration of Build Back Better — the president’s multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spending binge that has been stalled in Congress all year — purports to reduce the cost of prescription drugs via negotiation.
Medicare prescription drug plans already negotiate prices aggressively. As Obama’s CBO director Doug Elmendorf explained back in 2009: “Additional authority to negotiate for lower drug prices would have little, if any, effect on prices for the same reason that my predecessors have explained, which is that private drug plans are already negotiating drug prices.”
So how can Democrats extract the $250 billion they are counting on draining from Medicare drug spending to fund the creation of new, unrelated welfare programs in Build Back Better? They don’t negotiate — they impose price controls.
Read more: Drug price controls would hurt seniors
