Executive order nothing but a distraction as GOP works to raise costs and rip away health care

I could potentially win the lottery. It could happen, but odds are it won’t. The same can be said for a meaningless executive order on drug pricing signed by President Donald Trump Monday containing no policy specifics and designed to distract Americans from the Republican assault on health care.

That’s why it was disappointing to see a local news organization and health care advocates celebrating the executive order’s “potential” to lower drug prices. Don’t be fooled! The president has no real intention of lowering drug prices — this is all smoke and mirrors to disguise the fact that Republicans in Congress are actively working right now to rip away health care from millions of families to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations — including Big Pharma.

Trump has always been all talk and no action when it comes to drug prices. He had four years to lower drug costs during his first term and accomplished nothing. In fact, drug prices soared under Trump. 

He installed Big Pharma executives in key administration posts and handed out huge tax breaks to big drug companies, cutting Big Pharma’s effective tax rate by 40 percent but did nothing to lower drug prices.

An executive order signed by Trump on April 15 instructs Congress to side with big drug companies and undermine Medicare drug prices negotiation, giving drug companies four additional years to charge as much as they want for certain drugs before they can be selected to have a lower price negotiated. 

This executive order is more of the same meaningless fluff. It includes no detail on the authority the administration would use to execute the plan, so it is unclear how such a plan would be operationalized or legal. It’s more about padding Big Pharma’s profits abroad than it is about lowering costs here at home. After all, these drug companies are driven by profit and greed.

So, why the distraction? Why now? After repeatedly denying that Medicaid would be cut or that people would be hurt and have their benefits taken away, Medicaid is currently facing the largest cut in its history.

Under the cover of darkness on Mother’s Day, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released the text of their budget proposal, putting forth its plan to kick millions off their health care by enacting the largest cuts to Medicaid in history, raising costs on low-income families, closing rural hospitals, and enacting burdensome work requirements designed to deny people coverage. Millions of Americans — and  thousands of West Virginians — could lose coverage, including seniors, children, veterans, people with disabilities, workers who don’t get insurance through their jobs and people who take care of their children or elderly parents.

In addition to draconian Medicaid cuts, Republicans are raising premiums and out-of-pocket costs for tens of millions of people who buy coverage on their own. These Republican price hikes will force middle-class families to lose their coverage altogether.

House Republicans are betraying their own voters and making health care more expensive. Such drastic health care cuts will throw working families off coverage and into medical debt, take critical long-term care away from seniors and people with disabilities, shutter rural hospitals and leave children uninsured. This Republican budget will hurt people — all to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

Republicans in Congress continue to lie about the devastating impact their budget will have on people and communities across the country because they know how cruel and unpopular their war on health care is. Poll after poll after poll — even Trump’s own pollster — has found the majority of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, oppose any cuts to Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act. Yet, this Republican budget will give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the medical care and financial stability of everyone else.

Not a single dollar should be taken from health care to fund tax breaks for billionaires.