OF THE
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"Those who perpetrated the greatest ruse in American presidential history by staging the Biden presidency will never tell us what their ultimate agenda was"One baseline truth in current American life is that our bodily well-being gets worse as the so-called health care industry gets ever-larger — it is now 17.6-percent of the economy (GDP). This is clearly the basis of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign that attached itself to the Trump 2.0 program. You hear almost no arguments against MAHA itself, even from the Party of Hustles and Hoaxes, but plenty of calumny and objurgation against MAHA's chief advocate, Robert Kennedy, Jr.
— Victor Davis Hanson
[Trump's] proposal would likely only impact certain drugs covered by Medicare and given in an office — think infusions that treat cancer, and other injectables. But it could potentially bring significant savings to the government.
Medicare provides health insurance for roughly 70 million older Americans. Complaints about U.S. drug prices being notoriously high, even when compared with other large and wealthy countries, have long drawn the ire of both parties, but a lasting fix has never cleared Congress.
Under the planned order, the federal government would tie what it pays pharmaceutical companies for those drugs to the price paid by a group of other, economically advanced countries — the so-called "most favored nation" approach.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had teased this announcement late last month in a Newsmax exclusive.
"The United States of America pays for drugs, and the rest of the world free rides," Lutnick told Rob Schmitt Tonight in an exclusive sit-down. "You know how you can understand the rest of the world?
"We pay for the drug, and they pay the copay.
"They're paying like the $10, $20, $30."
The proposal will face fierce opposition from the pharmaceutical industry.
It was a rule Trump tried to adopt during his first term, but could never get through. He signed a similar executive order in the final weeks of his presidency, but a court order later blocked the rule from going into effect under the Biden administration.
A report by the Trump administration during its first term found that the U.S. spends twice as much as some other countries in covering those drugs. Medicare Part B drug spending topped $33 billion in 2021.
"Zelensky does not want to meet alone with Mr. Putin," Maloof explained. "And I think that if he decides to go ahead and negotiate something, and first of all, I question whether he'll be ALLOWED to do that because of internal politics... I think the Azov* group and his military will rebel,"
He did not hold back in his criticism: "They [Western Europe] just want to continue a conflict with Russia that, frankly, particularly the UK, that has been going on for almost 250 years. Their antagonism toward Russia is historic."The level of radicalness among some of the leaders of Western Europe and their backers is in several respects comparable to what has previously been noted among transnational Salafi jihadists (think ISIS).
Comment: Without the US recent disconnect from Netanyahu and Israel, the nuclear deal with Iran may have been impossible. Now? Highly unlikely. Is this progress?