2016 Oct 11^th

Joe Scarborough about leaped out of his chair this morning. His guest was economist Jeffrey Sachs, a Harvard professor of economics and one of the really, really smart academic types.  Dr. Sachs responded to Scarborough’s constant lament about the cost various entitlement programs and how they could bankrupt the country; prominent among these were Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. His response was to tell Scarborough that a drug to fully combat and cure Hepatitis “C” was available through Gilead pharmaceuticals, but at a cost of a thousand dollars a pill. Gilead had bought the patent from the developing drug company and the cost of producing the pill is just one dollar each. Then Sachs dropped his bombshell; Medicare and Medicaid are prohibited by law from negotiating with Gilead on the price of the drug.

Joe went ballistic. He wanted to know how it was possible that one of the largest purchasers of drugs in the country was legally prohibited from bargaining about the price of what they were buying. Sachs told him that in 2005 the drug companies had made bargains with legislators to contribute to their election campaigns in return for this kind of legislation; it’s just what lobbyists do. The kicker occurred when Sachs told Scarborough that Gilead had relocated their home office so that their home office was now in Ireland and their tax debt to this country was near zero. Joe was as outraged as I’ve ever seen him. He had his producer put the phone number of the House of Representatives on the screen and asked his listeners to call their legislators to complain.

Of course this kind of lobbying influence has been going on for years and it is one reason that citizens are disgusted with Washington. Trump, although he hasn’t addressed this particular issue, owes part of his popularity to just these sorts of problems.

Trump has been in “tweet heaven” lately. He is upset that Speaker Ryan has told his folks to campaign on their own, paying no attention to Trump. Trump claims that he is now free to be himself. Who he has been heretofore is not clear, although nothing in his demeanor has changed. Now his war with the Republican party seems beyond repair.

Senator McCain says he will not vote for him but instead will write in Senator Lindsey Graham’s name. This got the expected eruption from Trump. Given that there are now about 50 prominent Republicans who have rejected Trump, he will be very busy tweeting insults at

 all of them over the next several days.

I hope the recipients of those tweets save them to hand down to their descendants just to demonstrate that they were on the side of righteousness, motherhood and apple pie when their party imploded.