of this reckless administration. Worrisome.

I’m not sure that these price increases weren’t actually tacitly agreed to by the GOP Senate and House members beforehand. The way it works is that Pharma charges very high prices for all their new drugs, but also any drug that a patient might need to save their life. The GOP does not care about people that can’t afford to pay huge sums of money for diseases we have treatments for. It’s why they despise the ACA and Medicaid. A dead cost - as in patient with needs - to the system, even at the state level, is a welcome thing. They only thing that is stopping them is that they still need some live people to vote for them. If that changes, expect no state or the feds - as Trump was saying the other day - to have money to spend on any health care at all.

Part of my clientele were captive counsel for insurance companies.
I got to know some of these attorneys pretty well.
Late 80's early 90's, HMO's became the game.
There was a push by Congress to establish a simple healthcare boilerplate.
The insurance companies countered if they had to sell basic full coverage plans they could not offer the coverage because they would lose money. They relied on selling various programs to increase their ability to provide coverage. I'm being simplistic.
They got away with it then and continue to do so.

Once our health care system became entirely a for-profit venture, the idea was to rage the worried well. And use far, far lower paid staff nurse's aides and often nurses, usually recent immigrants - to save money.When a physician objected, they suddenly became a not in the network provider. Many other physicians just left. All the while the corporate accounts and VPs for management created tiers of what people that really needed a drug or treatment had to pay as a co-pay. There is nothing this health care system thrives on more than a dying mother, father, or child to get families to pay out huge sums of money in the hopes they can keep them alive. But the system relied on younger, healthy people paying out substantial amounts of money. That assumed that younger, healthier people were being paid enough so that they wouldn't miss that money. But when has this country ever paid young people a decent wage? Unless they were part of the elite group the insurance companies wanted to cover anyway. Even the more compassionate states did everything they could to reduce and restrict Medicaid costs, as health. are and education have always been the largest portion of any of their budgets. We desperately need Universal Health Care in this country, and the political will to fund it while educating people that well and healthy people are in everyone's interest.

It’s all talk and self-promoting hype. Always has been, always will be. Feed his ego and make him think he’s winning, then fleece him right under his own nose.