Pharmaceutical companies do not make deals without a profit incentive- Pfizer's price reductions to Medicaid drugs is a cash cow for the company

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by business column writer Michael Hiltzik

 Trump’s deal with Pfizer on drug prices won’t do much for American patients, but it’s a great cash cow 💲 🐄🐄for Pfizer.

Pfizer accused of ‘bringing discredit’ on pharmaceutical industry after Covid social media posts. Watchdog rules company breached regulatory code five times including promoting unlicensed medicines. The Telegraph report August 2024 by Camilla Turner.

If you had nothing better to do on September 30, 2025, you might have tuned in to a White House event at which President Trump, standing side-by-side with Albert Bourla, the chief executive of Pfizer, announced a deal with the big drug company that was described from the podium as “a massive win for the American people.”

Under the deal, according to the administration, Pfizer will sell its drugs to Americans “at a deep discount” from their list price. Pfizer, for its part, said the arrangement ensures that “U.S. patients pay lower prices for their prescription medicine.”

(US media has no understanding about how Medicaid is administered. In fact Medicaid beneficiaries do not pay for their medications so the "deal" announced to save money only benefits the Pfizer company and the federal government as the payor for the drugs. Medicaid beneficiaries qualify for this benefit based on their income and disabilities.)

As is the case with so many pronouncements issued from the Trump White House, there’s much less to this deal than meets the eye. Whether it will effectively reduce spending on prescription drugs for most Americans — or any Americans — is highly doubtful.

For Pfizer, however, this is a fabulous deal — never mind that the news media has portrayed it just as the White House and Pfizer hoped, as a major concession by the company to help the average consumer.

The truth is that the company won’t be suffering any significant reduction in revenue or profits by offering these “discounts.” It will, however, be exempted for three years from tariffs of 100% that Trump had threatened to impose on drugmakers.

How do we know that Pfizer is the principal beneficiary of the deal? Its stock price has risen nearly 15% in the five trading days since the announcement. Do you think that a deal that cut consumer prices for a company’s most popular products would really produce a stock market gain? Me neither.

Accordingly, it’s proper to take a close look at what we know, and more importantly, what we don’t know, about this deal.

“We’re still in a place where we don’t know everything we want to know,” said Peter Maybarduk, head of the access to medicines group of the nonprofit consumer organization Public Citizen. 

“That’s unfortunate, but it’s also by design.” Public Citizen has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documentation about the deal.

Pfizer and the White House both describe the deal terms as “confidential.” Pfizer told me that “more details” will be made available as the January implementation date draws nigh. The White House asserts that this deal is secret because it’s working out deals with other drug manufacturers.

This opinion echo is like hearing from the ghost of the Civil War Past

A warning, to change our current political path or face the dire consequences - a voice from the Land of Lincoln.

"If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves"~ attributed to an Abraham Lincoln prophesy.

Trump is destroying America from the inside- echo opinion published in the Illinois newspaper the Alton Telegraph

https://www.thetelegraph.com/opinion/article/Letter-to-the-Editor-Trump-is-destroying-America-13620261.php

My disgust, anger, and concern for The United States of America are conflated with disgust about letters from right wing tRumpzis. 

Some letters say that respect is deserved by anyone holding the office of president. But, I believe respect is earned, not handed out gratuitously to one who oozes contempt for his official role.

One commenter concludes that while my facts are correct, my positions are wrong. Another, with a fondness for endlessly echoing unfounded right wing talking points, employs classic projection, accusing me of that practice. The challenge I issue: actually listen to what Donald Trump says and observe what he does.

What is fact? There is no economic miracle is taking place in America. The economy was already in its eighth year of expansion when Trump came in (without majority vote!). 

Moreover, the national debt just hit a record high of $22 trillion. The annual deficit is fast approaching $1 trillion, accelerated by the “middle class” (aka "tax cuts for the rich!) selective tax cut. Corporate debt is at $9 trillion. America is the 13th-most indebted country globally. Seems the self-proclaimed “King of Debt” (tRump) made good on that promise.

40 percent of Americans couldn’t come up with $400 to cover an emergency. Economic inequality is extreme. Small business confidence is back down to the level it was when Trump assumed office. Retail sales had the biggest drop in December since 2009.

Five months ago, Wall Street’s consensus for Q4 GDP growth was 5 percent. The new forecast has lowered it to almost 0. Given the tax cuts, businesses were supposed to expand production, reinvest, hire millions of people. What they did instead was set new records for buying their own stock, pushing prices to record highs, while laying off employees. Over the past two years, the bot-driven market has seen a net selling of stocks, in aggregate. The exception: self-serving corporate self-buying — over $1 trillion last year, on a faster pace this year to date.

Where is the infrastructure bill, the comprehensive immigration bill (“so easy”), the health care plan that would cover everyone, do it better and cost less? The “horribly unfair” trade deficit with China hit a new record high in January. To be clear, Trump totally misrepresents trade deficits; still, his promise was to end it.

Yet where’s the focus? The fictitious national emergency of abhorrent Latin American migrants, that can ONLY be stopped by a wall “from sea to shining sea.” It’s almost finished, did you hear? The wall is “very, very on its way.” If so, why is more money needed? Why does the CBP say no new walls have been built or financed by Congress based on the prototypes unveiled in 2017? Where’s that elusive check from Mexico (“100 percent”)?

Do you honestly believe Trump’s disproportionate “executive time” is actually spent on the necessary tasks of governing? “No president ever worked harder than me.” Seriously?

In the past we held a general set of common values: national security, rule of law, ethics, freedom, constitutional norms, separation of powers. Now one side justifies Trump’s outrageous behavior as an acceptable trade-off for activist ”conservative” judicial appointments. How many pro-corporate, Citizens United-loving, anti-woman, anti-worker, anti-civil rights judges are required? What will be enough?

All of this distracts from the real, credible threat of a Russian asset in the White House. He submissively parrots Putin’s rhetoric, supports his agenda, discredits our country, even eliminating our cybersecurity coordinator and gutting the task forces protecting elections from foreign meddling. Is this putting America first?

(Attributed to... Lincoln.) He predicted, but probably not in these actual words, in 1828: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” In my opinion, tRumpziism is a threat to American democracy.

From, Nancee Magilson, Alton Illinois

Donald Trump doesn't believe the CIA but maybe he'll hear Sweden

"...Russian air force conducted a mock nuclear strike against Sweden during war games which saw a contingent of Russian aircraft approach Swedish airspace after crossing the Gulf of Finland."- reports The Telegraph.

Neoconservatives must feel their blood boiling when Donald Trump says he doesn't believe the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). So, where is former Vice President Dick Cheney when the nation needs him to verify the authenticity of our nation's intelligence? Meanwhile, the Republicans are sitting around with their proverbial fingers up their "you know whats", while one fiasco after another takes place in the Donald Trump transition. Maybe this report from Sweden will help to wake up Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump and her "kool aid" cult of colleagues. 

Vladimir Putin is an threat to world peace but Donald Trump apparently doesn't see him in that way.Swedish towns told to 'make preparations regarding the threat of war and conflict' with Russia (Obviously, Sweden doesn't need the CIA to verify their perception of Russia's threat to their nation's sovereignty.)

Richard Orange, in MALMO, 15 DECEMBER 2016 • 5:47PM

Sweden’s towns and villages were ordered to make preparations for a possible military attack in the latest sign of the country’s growing anxiety at its newly belligerent Russian neighbour, reports Richard Orange in "The Telegraph".

The country’s Civil Contingency Agency (MSB) last week sent a letter to local authorities across the country asking them to maintain operations in underground bunkers, ensure that a system of emergency sirens is in place, and to be open to cooperating on war exercises with the Swedish Armed Forces.

“In a state of war, civil defence for municipalities is no different from any of the other services they should provide,” the letter read, instructing local governments to “ensure their ability to maintain their functions during disturbed situations, and at the most extreme, in a war scenario.”

The dramatic call comes as Sweden returns to the Total Defence Strategy it maintained during the Cold War, reconstituting its old coastal anti-ship missile system, placing an armoured division on the exposed Baltic island of Gotland, and making plans to restart compulsory conscription as early as 2018.

“This strategy is not new. We used it during the Cold War and we are going to now strengthen coordination regarding civil defence,” Magnus Dyberg-Ek, who is leading the civil defence operation for MSB, told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

“What is new is that the security situation in our neighbourhood has worsened, and that we must therefore make preparations regarding the threat of war and conflict.”

The letter said that the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL) had agreed to oversee the preparations, and would work over the coming year with MSB and the Swedish Armed Forces to work out more details of municipalities’ duties.

These include developing a plan to maintain and upgrade emergency bunkers across the country, many of which have been sold or allowed to fall into disrepair.

“Operations centres in bunkers need to continue to be held in ready reserve. In special cases, decommissioning or sale can take place, but first there must be a dialogue between MSB and the local region,” the letter warned.

Sweden’s government decided to bring back civil defence last year as part of its defence policy for 2016 to 2020.
"There is nothing to suggest that war is likely, but we have been given an order from the government to plan for it,” Svante Werger, the press officer for MSB, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

The letter has provoked complaints from some municipalities that they have insufficient information on what is required and have not been provided with the necessary funding.

Jonas Hult, head of Safety and Security for the city of Malmö, told Sydsvenskan that the city still had no plans on how to distribute protective masks, vaccines, or petrol, or on how to direct people to bunkers and shelters in the event of an attack.

“Increasing war-readiness costs money, and it’s money municipalities do not have,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that the municipalities have been left in the lurch.”

In 2013, the Russian air force conducted a mock nuclear strike against Sweden during war games which saw a contingent of Russian aircraft approach Swedish airspace after crossing the Gulf of Finland.

This was one of several examples of dummy nuclear attacks against Nato and its allies in recent years, according to a Nato report.

War games run by the Rand Corporation, a US defence think tank, have predicted the Russian army could be in the Baltic capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in less than three days.

(So, Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway & Republicans with those fingers stuck "you know where", you're obviously not paying attention to "making America great again" when courting a friendship with the evil Vladimir Putin.