October 26, 2018

Health Care Roundup: Drug Companies Are Happy, Consumers Are Screwed

Was I too tough on President Trump yesterday? After all, his new Medicare policy on pharmaceuticals will lower prices if he follows through with it. But will he? And will it really make much of a difference even if he does?

Well, there’s one group of experts who don’t seem too worried: Wall Street investors. Here’s how the stock market reacted over the past few days:

On Wednesday, when the White House announced Trump’s speech, investors were nervous and pharmaceutical stocks dropped. But on Thursday they started hearing soothing rumors, and a little after 2 pm they heard the speech itself. Pharmaceutical stocks spiked up as everyone realized that nothing bad was happening. Then they drifted down a bit until the market closed and drifted up after the opening bell today.

None of these movements were huge. But that’s the point: it’s pretty obvious that investors and analysts aren’t very worried about things. They simply don’t believe that Trump’s new Medicare policy is going to have much effect on either sales or profits in the pharmaceutical industry.

And while we’re on the subject of Trump and health care, check this out:

The complete analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation is here. If Trump had left everything alone, silver-level premiums would have dropped about 16 percent this year. But because of his deliberate efforts to try to ruin Obamacare, premiums will remain about the same. More than likely, this means Trump has failed: despite his best efforts, he hasn’t done enough to have a serious impact on the overall use of Obamacare. “Staying the same” doesn’t give him much of a hook to claim that Obamacare is failing,¹ and he’s obviously lost the fight over pre-existing conditions. This severely limits what he and Republicans can do in the future.

¹Not that he won’t try. And in fairness, this gives liberals a tough PR message too. People don’t get mad at premiums staying the same no matter how much you tell them that without Trump they probably would have gone down.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

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That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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