Expect an August Surprise In Dems Fictional War on High Prices

It’s late in the game, and the Democrats are in a real bind. Despite the polling bump that Kamala Harris has enjoyed since Joe Biden’s ouster from the top of the ticket, Democrats are underwater on the top issue: the economy. American voters rightfully hold Democrats responsible for creating the highest inflation rates in 40 years. Despite their best efforts to convince voters about a robust economy, their message falls flat because voters compare their current situation unfavorably to how it was in 2019.  

But Democrats are savvy communicators, and they’ll use whatever rhetorical sleight of hand they can to increase their odds of winning in November. Their actions so far point to a strategy of distraction – pointing American voters toward ways they are supposedly saving them money without addressing the core issues that caused inflation in the first place. 

We’ve seen them run this play already with student loan forgiveness. In touting the thousands of dollars of debt they’ve forgiven individual college graduates, they’ve simply blown past the inherent unfairness to those who didn’t go to college or who have repaid their loans in full. Democrats have also ignored how it will further inflate the cost of higher education. They’re simply sticking to the message that it saved voters billions of dollars, hoping that the more than half-trillion-dollar gesture will turn out grateful recipients at the polls. 

The Biden-Harris administration employed this same tactic in its campaign to rein in junk fees, which it attributes to that age-old socialist boogeyman: corporate greed. Though it hasn’t brought down the price of gas or groceries, Democrats have and will continue to point to it as action to combat higher prices. 

A sign of Democrats’ growing desperation is their late addition of another campaign against greedy capitalists, now in the form of a national rent control mandate. Proposed by the Biden-Harris team after the president’s disastrous debate performance seemingly out of nowhere, it would do nothing to roll back the exorbitant rents induced by inflation they created. Still, it’s an opportunity to show action while sidestepping the central issue of runaway government spending. And in the next few weeks, we can expect Democrats to trumpet another way in which they are supposedly fighting high prices.  

Sham negotiations for the drug price-fixing scheme known as the “Drug Price Negotiation Program” within the Inflation Reduction Act (passed in 2022 without a single Republican vote) wrapped up on August 1st. CMS is scheduled to reveal its new prescription drug prices a month later. This is no coincidence:  Democrats crafted the legislation with an eye toward scoring political points just two months before the 2024 election.  

But because they’re struggling in the polls, don’t count on Democrats to wait until September. The party is desperate to cast their failed economic policies in a positive light, so they will almost certainly leak the new drug prices in the leadup to the Democratic National Convention. Of course, in any good-faith negotiation, parties would stick to established timelines, but Democrats have been halfhearted in their attempt to maintain the fiction that the program has been a real negotiation all along.   

In truth, it’s no negotiation at all. The IRA granted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) the authority– likely unconstitutional– to dictate prices on select drugs at a fraction of the average sales price. Drug companies that don’t go along can be slapped with fines as high as 19 times the revenues they take in from the drug under “negotiation.” In the end, companies are given a stark choice: accept the price set by the government or exit the Medicare and Medicaid markets with every drug they produce. These are all facts Democrats have downplayed while insisting it’s a negotiation like any other.  

As they unveil CMS’s prices, Democrats will strategically avoid other inconvenient truths. They won’t reveal that any savings appreciated by the government won’t go toward shoring up the struggling Medicare system. Instead, they will be siphoned off to pay for subsidies on electric vehicles and other green initiatives in the IRA. Nor will they mention how the law is destabilizing Part D, Medicare’s prescription drug program, or that premiums for Part D skyrocketed this year and are likely to jump even higher next year. And they certainly won’t tell you about how the program will tamp down future research on new cures and treatments or how it has already led to the cancellation of a number of drug programs. 

So, in the coming weeks, when Democrats are crowing about how they were able to stick it to America’s drug companies, voters should ask themselves whether it lowered their insurance premium or what they are paying at the pharmacy. They might also consider for a moment what a coincidence it is that they are learning about this “great victory” against high prices and corporate greed right now. Finally, they should ask themselves at what cost this so-called victory was achieved. Democrats are hoping they won’t. 

 Andy Mangione is the AMAC Action – Association of Mature American Citizens Senior Vice President. 

Reprinted with permission from Townhall.