guest views other views trump proves critics · u.s. government. and so much for the great...
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Tuesday, December 24, 2019 l 4A
Heavens, no. We don’t want the U.S. government to negotiate drug prices for Americans. That would be socialism, conservatives keep saying. So let’s have the Canadian govern-ment do it for us.
President Donald Trump’s lat-est plan for reducing the outrageous prices Americans pay for their pre-scriptions is to let states import cheaper drugs from Canada. Past pro-posals to tie U.S. drug prices to other countries’ prices have gone nowhere. And nowhere is where this one will go.
Big Pharma doesn’t want to lose its captive market of American suckers. Do you really think that Alex Azar, Trump’s secretary of health and human ser-vices and a former top executive at Eli Lilly and Co., is going to let the American con-sumer off the hook?
Azar has said that “this admin-istration does not believe in ... set-ting prices for drugs by government fiat.” How does he think Canada does it? He knows, of course, that nearly every advanced country demands rea-sonable drug prices, but drugmakers charge whatever they can get out of desperate Americans.
Thus, we have the pathetic spec-tacle of our diabetics taking buses to Canada to buy insulin for $30 a vial—a tenth (!) of the $300 they pay at home. The much-advertised drug Humira, for treating psoriatic arthri-tis, costs an average $822 in Switzer-land and $2,669 here.
By the way, insulin is excluded from Trump’s Canada proposal. So is Humira, because it is a biologic.
In any event, Canada says it will not become the supplier of drugs for the United States. Canada’s popula-tion is one-ninth ours, and its drug supply is limited. A huge boost in demand would drive up prices for Canadians.
We have to keep asking why Can-ada should be doing the job of the U.S. government. And so much for the great deal-maker in chief.
Some Americans may believe that
drugmakers are going to sell more product to Canada so Americans can pay less for their wares. People believe a lot of things. As long as the GOP controls most of Washington, enormous profits will flow Big Phar-ma’s way.
For example, the Medicare drug benefit, written by Republican law-makers, forbids Medicare from nego-tiating drug prices. The private insur-ers managing the drug benefits do put some brakes on what’s charged, but they don’t have the bargaining power of Medicare with its nearly 60 million beneficiaries.
The Department of Veterans Affairs does directly negotiate drug prices. If Medicare Part D were to pay prices similar to what the VA pays, Medicare would have saved $14 bil-lion in 2016 alone, according to an analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Candidate Trump vowed to negoti-ate on Medicare drug prices. Whether he was ever serious about it we have no idea.
The Democratic-run House just passed legislation that would let Medicare bargain for better prices. It has zero chance of getting through the Republican-controlled Senate.
Why doesn’t the almighty Trump use his famous powers of intimidation to whip Republican lawmakers into getting behind some plan to stop the drug industry’s extortion racket? It comes down to “our price or your life.”
Instead, Trump is blubbering about “freeloading” foreigners taking advantage of the American people. Or, as Azar put it, “The American senior and the American patient have been too long been asked to overpay for drugs to subsidize the socialist sys-tems of Europe.”
Don’t you love his use of the pas-sive tense? Americans haven’t been “asked” anything. They’ve been forced by Azar’s industry. Furthermore, if he and Trump object to other countries enjoying better deals, why are they backing a plan that would let Canada share its lower prices with Americans?
Because it’s not going to happen.Froma Harrop writes for Creators
Syndicate. Follow her on Twitter @FromaHarrop.
Sid Schwartz, Editor
Ann Fiore, Chief Copy Editor
Andrew Broman,
Opinion Page Editor
The Gazette Letters PolicyThe Gazette welcomes letters to the editor.
Letters should be typed or clearly legible and limited to 250 words, as calculated by our com-puter system. They may be edited for brevity, clar-ity, good taste and libel. We do not publish anon-ymous letters or poetry. Write as often as once every 30 days. Please include your full name and signature, complete address and a daytime phone number. Mail to: Letters to the Editor, The Gazette, 1 S. Parker Drive, P.O. Box 5001, Janesville, Wis. 53547-5001. You can also email your letter to [email protected].
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OPINION The Gazette
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Robert W. Bliss, 1937-1992 Sidney H. Bliss, 1937-1959
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DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years
old. Some of my little friends say
there is no Santa Claus. Papa
says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN
it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is
there a Santa Claus?
VIRGINIA O’HANLON
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH
STREET
VIRGINIA, your little friends
are wrong. They have been
affected by the skepticism of a
skeptical age. They do not believe
except they see. They think that
nothing can be which is not com-
prehensible by their little minds.
All minds, Virginia, whether they
be men’s or children’s, are lit-
tle. In this great universe of ours
man is a mere insect, an ant, in
his intellect, as compared with
the boundless world about him,
as measured by the intelligence
capable of grasping the whole of
truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa
Claus. He exists as certainly as
love and generosity and devo-
tion exist, and you know that
they abound and give to your
life its highest beauty and joy.
Alas! how dreary would be the
world if there were no Santa
Claus. It would be as dreary as
if there were no VIRGINIAS.
There would be no childlike faith
then, no poetry, no romance to
make tolerable this existence. We
should have no enjoyment, except
in sense and sight. The eternal
light with which childhood fills
the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus!
You might as well not believe
in fairies! You might get your
papa to hire men to watch in all
the chimneys on Christmas Eve
to catch Santa Claus, but even
if they did not see Santa Claus
coming down, what would that
prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus,
but that is no sign that there is
no Santa Claus. The most real
things in the world are those that
neither children nor men can
see. Did you ever see fairies danc-
ing on the lawn? Of course not,
but that’s no proof that they are
not there. Nobody can conceive
or imagine all the wonders there
are unseen and unseeable in the
world.
You may tear apart the baby’s
rattle and see what makes the
noise inside, but there is a veil
covering the unseen world which
not the strongest man, nor even
the united strength of all the
strongest men that ever lived,
could tear apart. Only faith, fancy,
poetry, love, romance, can push
aside that curtain and view and
picture the supernal beauty and
glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah,
VIRGINIA, in all this world there
is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God!
he lives, and he lives forever. A
thousand years from now, Vir-
ginia, nay, ten times ten thousand
years from now, he will continue
to make glad the heart of child-
hood.
Editor’s note: New York
Sun editor Francis Pharcellus
Church’s famous response to Vir-
ginia O’Hanlon appeared as an
unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897.
Yes, Virginia, there is
a Santa ClausPresident Trump stunned the Washing-
ton, D.C., establishment when he success-fully convinced both Mexico and Canada to accept new trade terms, but Wisconsin vot-ers always had faith that he’d come through for us.
In 2016, then-candidate Trump prom-ised to end decades of counterproductive free trade orthodoxy and bring jobs back to the Industrial Midwest. Wisconsin and other Midwestern states had seen their economies gutted by Washington’s mis-guided obsession with cheap labor and low-cost imports, yet Trump was the only candi-date with a plan to end the hemorrhaging of jobs from once-prosperous communities.
Liberals laughed at Donald Trump’s pledge to rebuild American industry, with President Obama famously scoffing that
Trump would need a “magic wand” to deliver on his eco-nomic promises. Other crit-ics were even more pessi-mistic, predicting that an economic catastrophe would ensue soon after Trump took office.
Boy, has President Trump proved them wrong. The U.S. economy has added
about half a million manufacturing jobs since January 2017, representing a signifi-cant share of the almost 7 million new jobs created during the Trump presidency.
Much of the boom we’ve experienced over the past three years can be attributed to conventional pro-growth policies, such as cutting taxes on middle-income Ameri-cans and eliminating excessive regulations. The next phase of growth will be driven by President Trump’s bold trade policy, which is based on securing a fair shake for Amer-ican workers by updating outdated trade rules and bringing serial trade abusers such as China into line.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, for instance, will add tens of billions of dollars to our GDP and support the creation of almost 200,000 new Amer-ican jobs—a significant boost even for the strong and growing Trump economy.
The USMCA corrects the most glaring deficiencies of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a deal that cost the U.S. at least a million jobs in just its first two decades. Unsurprisingly, the same peo-ple responsible for NAFTA are coming out against the USMCA, but given their track record, that should only bolster the case for the new deal.
The USMCA contains far greater pro-tections for American auto workers than NAFTA, opens new markets for Ameri-can farmers, and tightens safeguards to ensure that preferential tariff treatment only applies to products that are actually produced, rather than merely assembled in North America. The deal has also been touted as the “gold standard” for digital trade, with members of both parties sug-gesting that the USMCA could serve as a template for future trade negotiations.
The USMCA is a testament to Presi-dent Trump’s pragmatic approach, which eschews ideology in favor of delivering results for American citizens.
As U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told Face the Nation, “it was always my plan that this should be a Trump trade policy. And a Trump trade policy is going to get a lot of Democratic support.”
That’s largely because the USMCA includes heightened, enforceable labor standards for North American workers. Thanks to those provisions, Wisconsin workers will be able to compete with their Mexican and Canadian counterparts with-out having to accept lower wages or weak-ened workplace protections. More impor-tantly, companies will have a much stron-ger incentive to keep jobs in the U.S.
Wisconsin exported $10.5 billion worth of goods to Mexico and Canada in 2018, and that number will grow significantly with the implementation of the USMCA, espe-cially when it comes to agricultural and manufacturing products.
Doubters insisted that President Trump could never get Mexico and Canada to renegotiate NAFTA. As it turns out, cou-rageous negotiating was all it took, allow-ing the President to keep his magic wand in reserve in case he ever needs it for a real challenge.
Bob W. Kasten represented Wisconsin as a U.S. Senator from 1981 to 1993.
Trump proves critics wrong with USMCA
BOB KASTEN
FROMA HARROP
Republicans hold up deal to lower drug prices