Editor-at-large for “County Highway” Walter Kirn told SiriusXM’s Megyn Kelly on Monday that Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders should “get his butt” to the White House to support President Donald Trump’s move to slash drug prices — an issue Sanders once championed.
A longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry, Sanders has called out U.S. profits on the diabetes drug Ozempic, arguing it could be sold for under $100. While discussing Sanders’ criticism and Trump’s new executive order to cut drug costs, Kelly questioned how Democrats would respond before asking Kirn for his take.
“He [Trump] says this could save people up to 80% on their drug costs. Number one, there’s likely to be another lawsuit by Big Pharma saying this is an inappropriate end around Congress,” Kelly added. “Number two, it’ll be really interesting to see how the Democrats react to Donald Trump pushing this kind of Bernie-blessed program when it comes to pharmaceuticals. There you go, you take it, Walter.”
“Is this a country of politics or a country of issues?” Kirn asked. “Because in this case, Bernie and Trump agree. Bernie has been loud on this matter for a long time. He should get his butt over to the White House and show some solidarity on this because they’re going to need it against the greatest lobby in American life next to the, I suppose, military-industrial complex.”
Trump was joined by members of his administration, including Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Monday as he signed an executive order aimed at leveling international drug prices and pressuring drugmakers to charge more in Europe.
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Predicting the move would cut U.S. prices by 59% or more, Trump’s order called out the “egregious imbalance” created by a “purposeful scheme in which drug manufacturers” offer steep foreign discounts and “subsidize that decrease through enormously high prices in the United States.”
Kirn said that the U.S. excuse for paying more “in order to subsidize the research and development of ” drugs so the “rest of the world can benefit from lower prices is ridiculous.”
“But it has been the fig leaf, the massive fig leaf that they have used to cover their profiteering for decades. Really, under Obamacare, there was a real conspicuous omission because the supposed aim of the bill, of the legislation, was to lower prices for American healthcare,” Kirn said.
“But it did not include negotiation with drug companies for lower prices. Everybody noticed that at the time, that carve-out, as it were. Now Trump’s ending it,” Kirn said. “Frankly, this is a demolition job on mere partisanship because, just as you quoted the Young Turks person, if we can’t get together on this then we can’t get together on anything.”
Despite his previous push to Congress to lower prescription costs, Sanders issued a statement Monday saying that while he agreed with Trump on high drug prices, he believes the problem lies with the “greedy pharmaceutical industry” and not Europe.
“But let’s be clear: The problem is not that the price of prescription drugs is too low in Europe and Canada,” Sanders wrote. “The problem is that the extraordinarily greedy pharmaceutical industry made over $100 billion in profits last year by ripping off the American people.”
“Further, as Trump well knows, his executive order will be thrown out by the courts,” Sanders added. “If Trump is serious about making real change rather than just issuing a press release, he will support legislation I will soon be introducing to make sure we pay no more for prescription drugs than people in other major countries.”
During the signing, Kennedy Jr. said that while Sanders advocated the issue, Trump is the president who fulfilled the promise to voters. Kennedy Jr. and Sanders previously clashed in January during the HHS secretary’s confirmation hearing after Kennedy Jr. accused him of corruption for accepting pharmaceutical industry donations.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/YouTube/”The Megyn Kelly Show”)
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