President Biden is having none of this
Socialism is a scareword that Republicans have been stooping to for almost a century now, when it comes to halting or destroying any efforts at reform in America – sometimes killing good political plans before they can even come to a vote, like they did with President Clinton’s early attempts at healthcare legislation – and sometimes failing entirely in embarrassing fashion, like they did with efforts to kill social security and continue to do with their non-stop attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
They’ve been trying it with the infrastructure bill too – but the problem with this attack is that it’s only effective if people have a reason to make the connection and don’t just take it as scare words. That’s one reason why it’s been difficult for past president and presidential candidates to expand healthcare. President Biden’s new plan for lowering the cost of prescription drugs, however, makes it much harder for right-wingers to make that case, while at the same time appealing to many of their core voters, by making use of the free market, allowing Medicare to negotiate fair prices on the most expensive prescriptions and encouraging competition.
“The proposal I made while running for president is Medicare should negotiate drug prices across the board,” said President Biden, urging Congress to begin work on legislation that is expected to come to a vote in the fall. Both the Biden White House and Congressional Democrats have had a sizable number of victories this week – but they show no signs of slowing down, picking up work on prescription drugs after they have achieved success on voting rights.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making