By Bob Barr via The Daily Caller News Foundation | October 17, 2024
Former “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban likes to position himself as a humanitarian. But it turns out he might be just another well-connected celebrity using his high-profile political connections to rig the marketplace in his favor.
The healthcare scheme Cuban seems to have cooked up recently with Vice President Kamala Harris reveals his true motives.
Cuban has aligned himself with Big Pharma in pushing for healthcare regulations that would advance his business interests. Hardly by coincidence, Harris announced Oct. 8th that she would do their bidding if elected president.
The game plan concocted by Cuban and Big Pharma looks to unleash the power of the regulatory state against pharmacy benefit managers, known as “PBMs.” These are groups that businesses’ health plans hire as a way to lower drug costs for their employees. It happens also to be a strategy used by many government agencies.
PBMs are effective because, combined, they manage the health plans for just about every business in the country, with 275 million Americans benefiting from their services. Their size and scale gives them significant leverage at the negotiating table with the drugmakers, leading to lower consumer drug costs.
A study by the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs found that the great majority of businesses are happy with their PBMs. This unsurprising finding is reflected in research by Casey Mulligan, who chaired former President Trump’s White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2018 to 2019. Mulligan’s research found that PBMs provide more than $145 billion in value every year.
Why, then, are Big Pharma, Cuban and Harris pushing to regulate these companies?
For Big Pharma, the answer is simple — its otherwise laudable goal of making as much money as possible is facilitated when government regulations can be used to limit negotiating groups that challenge its list prices.
For Cuban, the answer is revealed in the fact that he has a company, Cost Plus Drugs, that employs a business model that hinges on eliminating PBMs (at least the ones he disfavors). So, when the government attacks PBMs, he benefits.
For her part, Harris has every political reason to go along with Cuban and Big Pharma’s regulatory wish list. Despite positioning herself as an enemy of Big Pharma and a champion to consumers, Harris has benefited handsomely from drugmakers’ political donations. As The Daily Signal pointed out:
“President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Big Pharma for ‘inflating the price of lifesaving medications’ … But Biden and Harris’ congressional campaigns received $9 million and $2 million, respectively, from 1990-2024.”
Cuban and Harris like to pretend they are challengers to Big Pharma’s political agenda; but if they were, they would not be pushing one of the drugmakers’ top lobbying priorities just weeks before a national election. They would also call out drug manufacturers for using the regulatory state to increase prices.
Unlike Cuban and Harris, the American people recognize it is the drug companies that are primarily to blame for the crisis in prescription drug prices. A KFF poll released earlier this month found that 89% of Republicans, 84% of Democrats, and 78% of Independents believe pharmaceutical companies’ greed is a contributing factor to today’s high drug costs.
It is a shame that Cuban and Harris are helping the drugmakers in their lobbying quest to deflect blame and become even bigger with the help of the regulatory state; but it should hardly surprise us, either, considering the long history of crony capitalism that infects the modern-day marketplace.
This is why it is so important that voters choose wisely Nov. 5th. The upcoming elections present a clear path forward to minimizing the influence-peddling and soft corruption that far too often rigs free markets against consumers and in favor of the well-to-do.
Here’s hoping the public makes the right calls on their ballots.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard and currently in President of the National Rifle Association.
Original article link
