“This was an unexpected victory in a long fight against an illegal cartel of three corporations who have raised their insulin prices in lockstep.”

The Biden Administration pleasantly stunned health care reform advocates Tuesday by including short-acting insulin in its list of 10 drugs for which Medicare will negotiate lower prices, power vested in the White House by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The IRA was passed in the face of one of the heftiest barrages of lobbying in congressional history, with the pharmaceutical industry spending more than $700 million over 2021 and 2022 — several times more than the second- and third-ranking industries — much of it aimed at stopping the legislation, watering it down, or undermining its implementation.

  • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If we pretend Trump wasn’t a thing, I’d say Biden is really living up to his campaign promise of “nothing will fundamentally change.” By that I mean, he hasn’t personally done anything amazing or terrible, and he hasn’t gotten in the way of others, either.

    For instance, this has the fingerprints of Bernie Sanders all over it, who chairs several committees in congress, including the relevant one for this. Has Biden stopped Bernie Sanders? No, and while I wish that fact wasn’t a win, it is.

    Bernie isn’t alone in being the only good thing about our current government, either, but Biden also hasn’t removed some of the terrible things the trump administration set up. The Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back a bunch of things I’m very upset about. It is my personal belief that he’s heavily influenced by certain groups (insurance) but is trying in other areas.

    Biden isn’t at all supporting policies that are just common sense if you live anywhere else, and while the UK isn’t the best, I’ve discussed this with a British friend and I still include them in that. In short, you have more protections from your government that they need to try to remove first.

    In my opinion if Biden had been elected after Obama or after a normal Republican he would’ve basically had a quiet presidency and been one of the ones you don’t really mention in history because nothing happened. Standard calls for corruption, but not worse than any regular senators. In today’s world, that’s positive, with Republican candidates promising to abolish the department of education, but in another world where things aren’t full of neonazis and fascists, I’d be saying it’s awful, because I would have wanted a president that would change things for the better, and now I’m just beaten down enough to be ok with “Nothing will fundamentally change.”

    • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      If only we could pretend Trump wasn’t a thing… sadly the courts, and many government agencies, will never be the same.

      • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I know. I want what he’s done to be a bad term, like it would’ve been. But the bar is just so low. Mediocrity is good because the bad are actively bad (and fascist)

    • Silverseren@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      " I’d say Biden is really living up to his campaign promise of “nothing will fundamentally change.”"

      Oh hey, people are still using the purposefully false claim where Biden in a speech to rich people said he was going to raise their taxes and they should be fine with him doing it because they’re rich and nothing will fundamentally change about their lifestyle.

      But, hey, keep taking that statement out of context like the trash you are.

      • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        First off, good for you, deciding someone is trash for having an opinion, I’m sure your parents are very proud.

        I didn’t get that from the buzz afterwards surrounding that quote, I got it from watching the debate live. But you know what? Those rich assholes’ lives SHOULD change. If their lives aren’t different, even if they got a higher tax rate, then it’s not enough, and without them having to tighten their belts, everyone lower than them will continue to starve.

        He’s Joe Biden, the dude who attacked social security as a senator. Saying that to the rich IS saying that to everyone, for him. And look, wow, during his term as president, nothing has fundamentally changed. Go figure.