GOP’s brilliant idea: Side with Big Pharma on drug prices

The prescription Medicare drug price negotiations that President Joe Biden secured in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act promise to save both the program and individual seniors a lot of money. In fact, according to the White House, in 2022 seniors paid $3.4 billion out-of-pocket for the initial 10 drugs in the administration’s plan. The Medicare program paid out $50.5 billion on just those 10 drugs from June 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023.

Never mind all that, Republican strategists argue. The GOP should take the side of Big Pharma and run against Biden’s plan. “Republicans have to figure out how to go after it,” one former Trump advisor, Joe Grogan, told Politico. Another argued for the age-old Republican tactic of scaring seniors about the issue. Joel White, a Republican health care strategist, gave his take on it: “It gets politicians and bureaucrats right into your medicine cabinet.”

To be clear, this is the plan that is going to save individual seniors hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on their prescriptions. It’s the plan that the Congressional Budget Office says will save the Medicare program billions of dollars and reduce the deficit. Smart thinking, Republicans. That’s right up there in strategic brilliance with trying to rebrand the GOP on abortion by saying they have “pro-baby policies.”