Here is why Democrats will lose the affordability war. Yesterday, Newsweek ran a terrific story headlined, “Donald Trump scores big win on Medicare, Medicaid drug pricing.” In a dramatic White House press conference yesterday afternoon, the President announced that nine more major pharmaceutical companies will join his “most favored nation” drug pricing policy, “bringing down the price of prescription drugs” for Americans. Affordability!
“The deal,” Newsweek reported, “ensures that drugs will be sold at reduced prices, many at the same price as overseas, and purchased through the new TrumpRx platform due to launch in January.” In other words, now that the Democrats have pushed all their midterm gambling chips onto the “affordability” square, President Trump is days away from opening up a website for people to buy common drugs at rock-bottom prices— a website with his name right in the URL.
It requires little imagination to forecast that nearly every American over 18 years old will use that website at one time or another. They’d better have fast servers.
The program will lower some popular drug costs to below co-pay prices (but only if the drugmakers give their drugs long, ridiculous-sounding, and difficult-to-pronounce names. Oh, wait.). Standout examples include:
- Boehringer Ingelheim will reduce the price of its Type II diabetes medicine, Jentadeuto, from $525 to only $55.
- Merck will reduce the price of its diabetes medication, Januvia, from $330 to $100.
- Sanofi will reduce the price of its prescription blood thinner, Plavix, from $756 to $16, and its insulin products at $35 per month’s supply.
Those were remarkable. But one drug captured the headlines— a medication used by millions of Americans: Eliquis, the most prescribed blood thinner on the market. Get this (and I am not making this up): Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer agreed to provide Eliquis for free to all Medicare patients. (Pfizer has certainly made a lot of concessions this year so far. It’s almost like Trump has something on Pfizer. I couldn’t say what, exactly.)
🚨 Bristol Myers Squibb at the White House: "We are very proud to announce that we will provide Eliquis, our number one prescribed medicine, to Medicaid — FOR FREE.” pic.twitter.com/WdxKH5L8M7
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 19, 2025
It’s not just prices. Bristol Myers Squib also agreed to donate 6.5 tons of Eliquis to the national security stockpile, which FYI is probably a fatal dose, also for free, and to invest $40 billion in new U.S. R&D and manufacturing. (Is it my imagination, or in that clip did the BMS pharma executive not smile once during her joyful announcement of pharmaceutical largesse? I mean, look at that face.)
Under every previous Administration, these announcements would trumpet vast new contracts with pharma to sell drugs to the government at insanely profitable prices. Not give stuff away. Not promise to spend billions on new manufacturing. But now we have a dealmaker in chief.
President Trump humbly explained it wasn’t even him. The drugmakers agreed to give away their most popular, most profitable drugs for free or a tenth of the original price —in exchange for nothing back— out of patriotism. “The pharmaceutical companies were difficult, but they also love our country, they knew it was unfair,” President Trump explained yesterday. Filled with a boundless love of country (and a keen sense of self-preservation), the pharma CEOs got on board the affordability express.
💉 Having tackled drugs, Trump promised yesterday to start ‘negotiating’ with insurance companies and convincing them it is also in their best interests to lower their prices, just like drugmakers. These kinds of negotiating sessions can be intense, can sometimes strain the boundaries of professionalism, as seasoned bargainers play ever tougher cards, and often include post-session stops at the urgent care center.
Big drugmakers might be the most reviled industry in the nation, and they clearly knew nobody would listen to them whine about being treated unfairly. Nobody cares about how, if they stop overcharging Americans, then their vast pharma profits might shrink, or how it’s really the middlemen who make the big bucks.
Insurance companies squat with drugmakers in the same leaky boat of unpopularity. Nobody cares that Obama and Congressional Democrats made the rules of the game that insurance companies must play. People blame the insurers, probably because their profits have multiplied ten times. (See, e.g., Luigi Mangione.)
Democrats think that they have Trump over a barrel of expiring Obamacare subsidies, which until now had artificially lowered the prices for about 20 million Americans with “top-tier” plans. Corporate media is salivating at the chance to run twenty million separate tragic personal interest stories next year, informing everyone exactly how much more expensive insurance has become for, say, Sally Witherspoon from Topeka, Kansas, and how she can no longer donate $9 a month to help feed starving African children, and now, to afford her healthcare, must eat out of the same bowl as her least-favorite cocker spaniel.
But … what if Trump ‘makes a deal’ with the insurance companies for them, the insurance companies themselves, to subsidize the plans? And what if nothing actually changes, or policy prices even go down? Who wins then?
More than anything, Democrats suffer from a lack of imagination. They cannot see the possibilities that Donald Trump can. I am beginning to think the Democrats will ultimately regret having picked affordability as their big 2026 issue. They forget who they’re playing against. TAW.
Truth and Facts are to Democrats what Green Kryptonite is to Superman and what Sunlight, Crosses and Garlic is to Dracula
I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation a few months ago (I have been defibbed and am back in normal rhythm). While they did tests to determine if that was really the case and could treat it, the cardiologist prescribed a blood thinner, just in case, to avoid a stroke. He prescribed Eliquis, but told me it might be expensive and, if so, he could hook me up with a Canadia source (but he gave me several weeks supply for free). When I was notified that a month’s supply was ready for pickup, I called and asked the cost. $950!! I said, no thanks, and got it from Canada (actually, out of India) for $17.00. Ridiculous.
Now, it can be FREE with Medicare? Tell me, how does this benefit Trump? How does this enrich Trump? Doesn’t he only do things that benefit HIM? Why didn’t any Democrats attempt this? Well, because it might cost them some contributions.
Even when a price is lowered here and another price is lowered there, dems will still be able to point at prices somewhere that are rising.
I noticed coffee and chocolate were their latest examples.
Two things: Both are imported and tariffs are involved.
Plus both have suffered bad crops due to bad weather, so supply is less.
I like to point out that low inflation is not that bad.
We’ve had only two periods of deflation: the Great Depression of 1929 and the Jimmy Carter botch of the Iran oil crisis in the 1970’s.
We do NOT want to go back to either of those situations.
But dems use a healthy economy to look at a price here and there and say, “Trump is making prices rise in an unaffordable way.”
Dems are worse, way worse.
PRESIDENT TRUMP probably made them a deal they couldn’t resist! Look what happened with all the TARIFFS! The leftist claimed it would be the end of our Trade with other Nations – that they wouldn’t agree. But then look – they DID agree and make deals – they still make a bunch but not as humongous as before! He told them they could rape us a LITTLE or not at all! The Insurance Companies will be the same – they’ll settle for a LITTLE raping rather than none! And WHY? Because they have to – it’s in their best interests!