Washington: We Can't Afford Biden's Big Pharma Political Play

OPINION

As the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, the nation is counting on Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., to crack down on Big Pharma’s big drug pricing boondoggle.

Because one thing’s for sure: the Biden administration isn’t willing to do so.

Lina Khan is the commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the agency responsible for enforcing consumer protection laws and preventing unfair business practices.

She has a responsibility to address the fact that drug prices in America continue rising to unsustainable levels, yet she continually refuses to do so.

Why is this so?

Could it be because Big Pharma supports so many left-leaning political campaign committees, unions, and illegal immigration and leftist ideological groups?

Probably.

The dirty secret in Washington is that Democrats cannot use the law against this lobby — one of the top political interest groups in the nation — because they need to keep its campaign money flowing.

A report from the American Accountability Foundation recently outlined this point well. As Tom Jones, the organization’s leader, recently highlighted:

• Our research showed that in Washington DC, PhRMA’s federal PAC has contributed $396,750 to liberal candidates and committees that support them between 2017 and 2022.
• We also found PhRMA contributed a staggering over $4 million to major national 527 organizations that support liberal candidates such as the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), the Democratic Attorney Generals Association (DAGA), and other similar 527 groups that are active in state elections.
• This same report showed that PhRMA contributed over $5.2 million to organizations that either supported COVID-19 vaccine mandates or that called for the removal of social media accounts that countered the pro-vax narrative.

Democrats who dare challenge this powerful interest group risk being cast out of power by party leadership.

That’s probably why Khan loves to blame other little-known actors in the healthcare industry that the average person doesn’t know anything about or doesn’t care about.

The major drug companies love to pretend that these little-known organizations are fully responsible for all of Americans’ healthcare woes.

That makes them an easy target that Khan can hammer to pretend that she’s addressing healthcare unaffordability.

Yet, she won’t say a peep about the most significant problem actors when it comes to drug affordability: the manufacturers themselves.

Drug companies continue raising the list prices of their products.

Last year alone, they hiked the cost of their products by 35%.

Their repeated price increases can’t have much to do with Bidenflation because their markups continually exceed the inflation rate.

It’s not as if these companies weren’t turning a profit before these crazy list price increases. Big Pharma already receives 65% of every dollar the American people spend on prescription drugs.

While that’s a pretty sizable chunk of change, the lobby seems to lack the ability to be content and keeps hiking prices.

But Lina Khan can’t seem to see any of this — none of it at all. Amazing, right?

Like most Democrats on this issue, she has proven to be as useless as square wheels on a train.That’s why the nation so desperately needs James Comer to step up here.

While Comer has already held investigatory hearings on some of the usual healthcare suspects, he has yet to address the Big Pharma elephant in the room.

Thankfully for the American people, Comer is no Lina Khan.

Throughout his congressional career, he has proven to be a true patriot who isn’t afraid to get his hands in the political mud.

He doesn’t care about what the donor class says. All he cares about is enacting commonsense populist policies — ones that work for the average American as opposed to the already fat-and-happy suits on Wall Street.

Comer has been pretty busy investigating the Hunter Biden saga and the other stark examples of alleged Biden family less-than-savory activities.

But Rep. Comer should make exposing Big Pharma his next high priority.

Inflationary drug prices are affecting millions of Americans, and it’s about time for someone to pick up the Biden administration’s slack on the issue.

Stacy Washington (@StacyOnTheRight) is the CEO of Share Net Ministries, a healthcare sharing nonprofit. She is also a decorated Air Force veteran, an Emmy-nominated TV personality, and the author of "Eternally Cancel Proof – A Guide for Courageous Christians Navigating the Political Battlefront." Washington hosts Stacy on the Right, which airs nightly 9 pm to midnight ET on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125.