Health Care Roundup: Drug Companies Are Happy, Consumers Are Screwed

Was I too tough on President Trump yesterday? After all, his new Medicare policy on pharmaceuticals will lower prices if he follows through with it. But will he? And will it really make much of a difference even if he does?

Well, there’s one group of experts who don’t seem too worried: Wall Street investors. Here’s how the stock market reacted over the past few days:

On Wednesday, when the White House announced Trump’s speech, investors were nervous and pharmaceutical stocks dropped. But on Thursday they started hearing soothing rumors, and a little after 2 pm they heard the speech itself. Pharmaceutical stocks spiked up as everyone realized that nothing bad was happening. Then they drifted down a bit until the market closed and drifted up after the opening bell today.

None of these movements were huge. But that’s the point: it’s pretty obvious that investors and analysts aren’t very worried about things. They simply don’t believe that Trump’s new Medicare policy is going to have much effect on either sales or profits in the pharmaceutical industry.

And while we’re on the subject of Trump and health care, check this out:

The complete analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation is here. If Trump had left everything alone, silver-level premiums would have dropped about 16 percent this year. But because of his deliberate efforts to try to ruin Obamacare, premiums will remain about the same. More than likely, this means Trump has failed: despite his best efforts, he hasn’t done enough to have a serious impact on the overall use of Obamacare. “Staying the same” doesn’t give him much of a hook to claim that Obamacare is failing,¹ and he’s obviously lost the fight over pre-existing conditions. This severely limits what he and Republicans can do in the future.

¹Not that he won’t try. And in fairness, this gives liberals a tough PR message too. People don’t get mad at premiums staying the same no matter how much you tell them that without Trump they probably would have gone down.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate