“This was an unexpected victory in a long fight against an illegal cartel of three corporations who have raised their insulin prices in lockstep.”
The Biden Administration pleasantly stunned health care reform advocates Tuesday by including short-acting insulin in its list of 10 drugs for which Medicare will negotiate lower prices, power vested in the White House by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The IRA was passed in the face of one of the heftiest barrages of lobbying in congressional history, with the pharmaceutical industry spending more than $700 million over 2021 and 2022 — several times more than the second- and third-ranking industries — much of it aimed at stopping the legislation, watering it down, or undermining its implementation.
As someone from the UK, I don’t know what to make of the Biden administration.
I see positive news articles about what they’re doing, then I see people (not just right wing) saying it’s going poorly…
Obviously things can always be better and there are going to be areas where they’re failing, but how actually is it going over all?
Biden is fine. A lot of people are looking for someone who is going to revolutionize things overnight. A lot of folks also like to give the President blame or credit for things out of his control. Overall I’ve been pleasantly surprised. All I really wanted was not Trump, but Biden has been a lot better than that.
ive been waiting 40 years for democrats to do something that didnt line insurance companies pockets. im still waiting. how much longer until this ‘revolution’ youre expecting? i suspect ill be long dead.
biden is an ancient husk of a politician, doing the bare minimum that the dems have been doing for as long as i can remember. this is not revolution, this is conservatism.
its sad that this ‘bare minimum’ is now seen as ‘a lot better than not trump’
Try reading what you’re responding to again, slowly. I think you misread.
If you want a revolution then you need to get people on board with it first, not politicians.
And it seems like America’s split down the middle between two groups with very different opinions, so I don’t see that happening anytime remotely soon.
The far left is basically as bad as maga when it comes to wanting a functioning government. They just want their way and they don’t much care about how it happens.
Your view of reality is skewed.
If we pretend Trump wasn’t a thing, I’d say Biden is really living up to his campaign promise of “nothing will fundamentally change.” By that I mean, he hasn’t personally done anything amazing or terrible, and he hasn’t gotten in the way of others, either.
For instance, this has the fingerprints of Bernie Sanders all over it, who chairs several committees in congress, including the relevant one for this. Has Biden stopped Bernie Sanders? No, and while I wish that fact wasn’t a win, it is.
Bernie isn’t alone in being the only good thing about our current government, either, but Biden also hasn’t removed some of the terrible things the trump administration set up. The Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back a bunch of things I’m very upset about. It is my personal belief that he’s heavily influenced by certain groups (insurance) but is trying in other areas.
Biden isn’t at all supporting policies that are just common sense if you live anywhere else, and while the UK isn’t the best, I’ve discussed this with a British friend and I still include them in that. In short, you have more protections from your government that they need to try to remove first.
In my opinion if Biden had been elected after Obama or after a normal Republican he would’ve basically had a quiet presidency and been one of the ones you don’t really mention in history because nothing happened. Standard calls for corruption, but not worse than any regular senators. In today’s world, that’s positive, with Republican candidates promising to abolish the department of education, but in another world where things aren’t full of neonazis and fascists, I’d be saying it’s awful, because I would have wanted a president that would change things for the better, and now I’m just beaten down enough to be ok with “Nothing will fundamentally change.”
If only we could pretend Trump wasn’t a thing… sadly the courts, and many government agencies, will never be the same.
I know. I want what he’s done to be a bad term, like it would’ve been. But the bar is just so low. Mediocrity is good because the bad are actively bad (and fascist)
" I’d say Biden is really living up to his campaign promise of “nothing will fundamentally change.”"
Oh hey, people are still using the purposefully false claim where Biden in a speech to rich people said he was going to raise their taxes and they should be fine with him doing it because they’re rich and nothing will fundamentally change about their lifestyle.
But, hey, keep taking that statement out of context like the trash you are.
First off, good for you, deciding someone is trash for having an opinion, I’m sure your parents are very proud.
I didn’t get that from the buzz afterwards surrounding that quote, I got it from watching the debate live. But you know what? Those rich assholes’ lives SHOULD change. If their lives aren’t different, even if they got a higher tax rate, then it’s not enough, and without them having to tighten their belts, everyone lower than them will continue to starve.
He’s Joe Biden, the dude who attacked social security as a senator. Saying that to the rich IS saying that to everyone, for him. And look, wow, during his term as president, nothing has fundamentally changed. Go figure.
I feel like he isn’t a deranged narcissist who would nuke his own country if it somehow benefited him.
The bar is on the floor for the Republicans.
To borrow a couple of lines written for the UK in the 60s:
Biden is a well meaning old man whittling away at the problems the best he can within the rules of the system. The problem is that the system has been rigged against working people for at least 40 years now; some people feel the problems go deeper than what you can solve by being by the book and doing politics as usual.
Don’t forget that we have right of center (democrats), right (republicans) and left of center (bernie sanders).
Democrats are still rich and love the lobby money.
Clintons have invested in privatizing prisons for example.
It’s not just the republicans that take advantage of the single ideology vote.
the truth is, biden and his peers are conservatives who do not believe that healthcare is a right. its only for those that can afford it. They attempt to appease the masses with these generous rebates on life saving drugs.
if the powers that be really cared about humans they would be pushing mass changes to the entire system, not placating businesses by keeping prices high while also pretending to negotiate for the unwashed.
follow the money, and all the money says “we dont care about healthcare or human beings”
that whole line about “but we cant affect change overnight. those crazy progressives!”. motherfucker, ive been waiting 40+ years for them to do fucking anything that didnt line some providers pockets.
current democrats are fucking useless.
I have no idea why you got downvoted on this comment. With the exception of the Democratic Socialist subset, most Democrats are pretty conservative. Remove the white Christian bigotry and they’re pretty similar Regan era Republicans.
Obama himself is quoted as saying that some of his own policies would make him a “moderate conservative” by 1980’s standards. Then consider that Biden was picked as his running mate to appeal to the wing of the party that was more conservative than him.
Troglodytes that pretend they are above the team-sport aspect of politics fucking HATE when you point out what a limp dick milquetoast piece of shit Biden is and how his administration loves to shout about putting band-aids on bullet wounds, and the fucking neoliberals eat that shit up like candy.
PS:
fuck capitalism.
“I have no idea why you got downvoted on this comment.”
Literally no downvotes on the comment you’re responding to. Until me, of course. You can have one too.
I have an honest question. In the current political climate, how would Democrats go about changing everything?