I was on the board of CAMERA for many years, and very much valued Andrea Levin's work. I have no information on what happened beyond that in the 2 emails that Ira Stoll quoted. But as perspective, Andrea Levin and the board brought me onto the board years ago because of my involvement with digital platforms, and others were also employed years ago with a similar focus. I never felt that my focus on rapid analysis was not valued.
The Trump administration is not rejecting setting of prices by the marketplace. It is saying that the relevant marketplace is what people pay in other countries, where the pharmaceutical companies make some profit, but less than they get in the USA.
The effect of this change will be that drug companies will raise their prices in other countries and lower their prices in the USA.
Some foreign countries will cheat by allowing their own companies to make copies of drugs that are still covered by patents.
A free market solution would allow the drugs to be imported freely from other countries that have lower prices allowing arbitrage, and the effect would probably be similar to Trump's own policy. I have trouble seeing the status quo as being guided by the free market or as being that innovative.
Under any other president, the media would be rolling out statistics about how much the average person pays for their prescriptions and how much the potential savings could be, and how the economy might surge because all that money could be spent on more productive things. If Biden had made the same announcement, every major outlet would’ve run with glowing human-interest profiles: Meet the grandmother whose insulin just became affordable thanks to bold leadership.
So to recap: Trump promises lower drug prices, and the media is as outraged as if he’d just clubbed a baby seal on the trading floor. Their outrage wasn’t over what sick Americans pay— it’s over what Pfizer’s shareholders might lose.
I was on the board of CAMERA for many years, and very much valued Andrea Levin's work. I have no information on what happened beyond that in the 2 emails that Ira Stoll quoted. But as perspective, Andrea Levin and the board brought me onto the board years ago because of my involvement with digital platforms, and others were also employed years ago with a similar focus. I never felt that my focus on rapid analysis was not valued.
The Trump administration is not rejecting setting of prices by the marketplace. It is saying that the relevant marketplace is what people pay in other countries, where the pharmaceutical companies make some profit, but less than they get in the USA.
The effect of this change will be that drug companies will raise their prices in other countries and lower their prices in the USA.
Some foreign countries will cheat by allowing their own companies to make copies of drugs that are still covered by patents.
A free market solution would allow the drugs to be imported freely from other countries that have lower prices allowing arbitrage, and the effect would probably be similar to Trump's own policy. I have trouble seeing the status quo as being guided by the free market or as being that innovative.
Under any other president, the media would be rolling out statistics about how much the average person pays for their prescriptions and how much the potential savings could be, and how the economy might surge because all that money could be spent on more productive things. If Biden had made the same announcement, every major outlet would’ve run with glowing human-interest profiles: Meet the grandmother whose insulin just became affordable thanks to bold leadership.
So to recap: Trump promises lower drug prices, and the media is as outraged as if he’d just clubbed a baby seal on the trading floor. Their outrage wasn’t over what sick Americans pay— it’s over what Pfizer’s shareholders might lose.