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RFK Jr Pressed on Whether He and Trump Will 'Cave to Big Pharma' on Medicare Drug Prices
"Will you defend the law in the Inflation Reduction Act which already is negotiating prescription drug prices?" Sen. Bernie Sanders asked Kennedy during his second confirmation hearing.
Jan 30, 2025
Senate Democrats and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday pressed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, to pledge that the new administration won't give in to the pharmaceutical industry's attacks on a popular Medicare drug price negotiation program that has already yielded significant results.
Sanders raised the matter during Kennedy's confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on which the Vermont senator serves as the ranking member.
"Will you defend the law in the Inflation Reduction Act which already is negotiating prescription drug prices?" Sanders asked, referring to the Biden-era measure that empowered Medicare to negotiate the prices of a select number of prescription drugs directly with pharmaceutical companies.
Declining to provide a yes or no answer to Sanders' question, Kennedy replied that "President Trump wants us to negotiate drug prices" and added that, if confirmed as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, he would "comply with the laws."
Watch:
The exchange came after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency within HHS, issued a statement Wednesday declaring that "lowering the cost of prescription drugs for Americans is a top priority of President Trump and his administration" and expressing commitment to "incorporating lessons learned to date from the [Inflation Reduction Act] program and to considering opportunities to bring greater transparency in the negotiation program."
"CMS intends to provide opportunities for stakeholders to provide specific ideas to improve the negotiation program, consistent with the goals of achieving greater value for beneficiaries and taxpayers and continuing to foster innovation," the agency added.
While some advocates for lower drug prices cautiously welcomed the CMS statement, Senate Democrats warned Thursday that its choice of language "appeared to open the door to Big Pharma's requests."
"If confirmed as secretary, you will be under tremendous pressure to cave to Big Pharma and undermine Medicare drug price negotiation Republicans have worked in lock-step with Big Pharma by relentlessly attacking Medicare drug price negotiation at every turn," a group of 12 Senate Democrats and Sanders wrote in a letter to Kennedy. "Now, Republicans have unified control of the federal government. They will undoubtedly try to leverage this power to walk back the progress Democrats made to lower drug prices through this important new authority."
The letter pushes Kennedy to answer a number of questions related to the drug price negotiation program, including whether he would recommend that the Trump administration defend the program from the pharmaceutical industry's ongoing legal assault.
"On behalf of the tens of millions of Americans who count on Medicare," the new letter states, "Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee want to know whether the Trump administration will follow through on negotiating with Big Pharma to deliver the lower costs promised to the American people."
After Trump announced his intent to nominate Kennedy as HHS chief late last year, the pharmaceutical lobby made clear its plan to push the new administration to undercut the price negotiation program that is poised to deliver billions of dollars in savings by bringing down the prices of expensive and widely used medications.
Earlier this month, the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly said his company and other drugmakers would ask the Trump administration to pause the price-negotiation program, claiming that "they need to fix it" before proceeding to talks over the next slate of 15 drugs selected in the final days of the Biden administration.
In their letter on Thursday, the senators demanded that Kennedy "confirm in writing" that he "will follow the law and reject
Big Pharma's request to pause Medicare drug price negotiation."
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NPR Hard at Work Normalizing Trump's Far-Right Cabinet Picks
When John Bolton is the most aggressive critic of the incoming administration, you know we have a problem.
Nov 23, 2024
Donald Trump hasn’t taken office yet, but he has wasted no time naming cabinet members and other nominations for his incoming administration. They must be confirmed by the Senate—unless Trump manages an unprecedented end run around the Senate’s power to advise and consent—which means the media play an important role in helping bring to light their records and qualifications.
Clearly Trump is trying to see how far he can push the limits of the country’s democratic institutions with these nominations, which include an anti-vaxxer to oversee the country’s public health infrastructure, and a congressmember investigated for sex trafficking to be attorney general. A look at NPR‘s coverage so far suggests that the public radio network has no interest in using the power of the so-far-still-free press to preserve those limits.
In its reporting on Trump’s picks over the seven days from November 13 through November 19, NPR‘s Morning Edition has featured eight guest sources offering commentary, in the form of either soundbites or lengthier interviews, according to a FAIR search of the Nexis news database. All but two were current or former Republican officials, including one current Trump adviser. The other two were a representative from the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, and a political risk consultant (who offered a perfectly neutral assessment). All of them were white men.
As a result, the most forceful denunciations of Trump’s parade of shockingly unqualified nominees that Morning Edition listeners were permitted came from one of the most right-wing members of the George W. Bush administration, John Bolton (11/14/24). And the show made sure to explicitly balance his interview by also giving one a few days later to Trump adviser Marc Lotter (11/18/24).
The dearth of nonpartisan experts and utter absence of any progressive or even mildly liberal voices also meant that only Trump’s most outrageous picks thus far—Matt Gaetz (who has since withdrawn), Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—were subject to “expert” criticism on the show. Meanwhile, most of his other picks weren’t even mentioned, let alone scrutinized.
One guest, a former George W. Bush official, made the only mention of Mike Huckabee, Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz as picks, calling them “leaders who have to be taken seriously” (11/13/24). But in a sane democracy, the media would be taking a close look at these candidates, too, who have more polished resumes but similar levels of extremism: Huckabee, picked as ambassador to Israel, has argued repeatedly that the West Bank is Israeli territory, and that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.” Waltz, for national security advisor, wants Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. Stefanik, tapped to be UN ambassador, led the congressional witch hunt against college presidents last spring.
‘Look at the positives here’
It wasn’t just Morning Edition sanewashing Trump’s picks at NPR. In a piece (NPR.org, 11/15/24) about Trump’s selection of RFK Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, NPR‘s headline and opening framed the anti-science conspiracy theorist as just a guy who “Wants to ‘Make America Healthy Again,'” but who “Could Face a Lot of Pushback.”
It took seven paragraphs for reporters Will Stone and Allison Aubrey to mention that scientists are “deeply worried about Kennedy’s history of questioning scientific consensus on vaccines and his antagonism to mainstream medicine more broadly.”
After quoting one public health expert who expressed strong fears about the serious damage Kennedy could do to the country’s public health system, NPR cheerfully offered the other side of things:
And yet there’s no denying there are areas of substantial overlap between the goals of MAHA and scientists who have long advocated for tackling the root causes of chronic illness.
The reporters did point out the contradictions between Kennedy’s regulatory goals, which would take on “big food and big pharma,” and the GOP/Trump war on government regulation of big corporations. But they gave the last word to Kennedy adviser Calley Means to argue, without rebuttal:
“I would tell anyone skeptical about this, to look at the positives here,” he says. “This MAHA agenda is one of the golden areas for true bipartisan reform.”
He says Kennedy’s approach will be to insist on what he terms “accurate science.”
In total, the piece gave more time to Kennedy allies with products to sell than to actual public health experts.
‘Expressed doubts’—or lied?
In a piece on Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, oil executive Chris Wright, NPR (11/16/24) offered a textbook example of sanewashing that ought to have jarred any editor:
Wright has also expressed doubts about whether climate change is driving extreme weather events.
“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright said in a video uploaded to LinkedIn.
“We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods despite endless fearmongering of the media, politicians and activists,” he also said in the video. “The only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive, opportunity-squelching policies justified in the name of climate change.”
Those quotes do not illustrate “doubts about whether climate change is driving extreme weather events,” they illustrate anti-science climate denialism in the form of flat-out lies.
‘Backstop’ in action?
As we reported last month (FAIR.org, 10/24/24), NPR recently installed a “Backstop” editorial team to review all content prior to airing or publishing, after the latest round of right-wing complaints of bias. When the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it would be funding that team, it explained the purpose was to help NPR achieve the “highest standards of editorial integrity,” including “accuracy, fairness, balance, objectivity and transparency, and the obligation to include diverse viewpoints.”
The incredibly lopsided “balance,” lack of actually diverse viewpoints, and dubious fairness and accuracy displayed in the network’s nomination coverage reveals what the CPB was really going for with the new oversight it installed.
Not all NPR cabinet reporting has been spineless. A team of reporters led by Shannon Bond, for instance, published an in-depth piece (11/14/24) on Defense nominee Pete Hegseth that probed his strong links to extremist white Christian nationalism.
But three days later, another NPR report (11/17/24) talked about Hegseth as if the biggest problem with him is simply that senators simply “have come to expect” nominees with a different “background”:
Real trouble started brewing with Pete Hegseth, an Army vet known for his weekend commentary on Fox News, being named secretary of Defense. Although a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions, he does not have the background that senators have come to expect of someone appointed to head up the Department of Defense. Hegseth’s frequent attacks on the uniformed leadership of the armed services has included talk of firing current generals, including at the highest levels.
Similarly, on All Things Considered (11/16/24), NPR senior political editor Domenico Montanaro explained the “difference” between Trump’s 2016 picks and those this year, saying the 2016 nominations
sometimes stood in the way of things he wanted to do that broke with the normal way…that things had been done for years. This time around, he’s really surrounding himself with a team of loyalists.
What former cabinet members did was stop Trump from doing things that were unconstitutional or abuses of power. For NPR to minimize them as “the way things had been done for years” indicates that the network is currently more concerned with preserving its CPB funding than sustaining democracy.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to NPR public editor Kelly McBride here. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.
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'Whole Thing Is an Epic Fraud': RFK Jr. Official Admits Goal Is to Elect Trump
"As the saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them," said a Democratic National Committee spokesperson.
Apr 08, 2024
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s stated platform in the 2024 presidential race centers on promoting an "honest government," a "clean, healthy environment," and the protection of civil liberties—but his New York State director last week boiled down the Independent campaign's true goal at a meeting with Republican voters: ensuring former President Donald Trump wins the election.
Speaking at a meeting last Thursday, Rita Palma first checked to make sure there were "no Biden voters in the house" before telling her audience that her "No. 1 priority" is to ultimately take electoral votes away from President Joe Biden.
"The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter," said Palma, "our mutual enemy is Biden."
States including New York, California, and "most of the Northeast" are likely to vote for the Democratic president, she continued, but if Kennedy, whom Palma referred to as Bobby, is on the ballot in New York, the campaign could help "get rid of Biden."
video shows RFK Jr’s NY director laying out a clear plan:
“The Kennedy voter & the Trump voter—our mutual enemy is Biden. … if nobody gets to 270, Congress picks the president. So who are they going to pick if it’s a R Congress? They’ll pick Trump.”pic.twitter.com/YQKDcEFUlm
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) April 8, 2024
She urged the assembled GOP voters to give their "vote to Bobby and at least get rid of Biden and give those 28 electoral votes to Bobby rather than to Biden, thereby reducing Biden's 270 [electoral votes]."
"Two hundred seventy wins the election," added Palma, who was hired by Kennedy's campaign after she canvassed for Trump in 2016 and 2020. "If nobody gets to 270 then Congress picks the president, so who are they gonna pick if it's a Republican Congress? They'll pick Trump, so we're rid of Biden either way."
Political observers have noted in recent months that Kennedy has drawn support from right-wing billionaires, but Palma's blunt description of her plan to "block Biden from winning the presidency" left critics stunned as the video of the event circulated on social media on Monday.
"Whole thing is an epic fraud. Kennedy is spouting Russian propaganda, is now openly betraying the country," said political strategist Simon Rosenberg, referring to the candidate's recent comments about Russia's claim that it aims to "de-Nazify" Ukraine.
"RFK Jr.'s campaign is saying the quiet part out loud," Matt Corridoni, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CNN. "As the saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them: RFK Jr.'s campaign isn't building a plan or a strategy to get 270 electoral votes, they're building one to help Trump return to the Oval Office."
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