Last Call For Bad Medicine, Con't

House Democrats have successfully passed a bill capping insulin costs at $35 per month, but the measure faces heavy opposition in the Senate.

The House on Thursday passed a bill capping the monthly cost of insulin at $35 for insured patients, part of an election-year push by Democrats for price curbs on prescription drugs at a time of rising inflation.

Experts say the legislation, which passed 232-193, would provide significant relief for privately insured patients with skimpier plans and for Medicare enrollees facing rising out-of-pocket costs for their insulin. Some could save hundreds of dollars annually, and all insured patients would get the benefit of predictable monthly costs for insulin. The bill would not help the uninsured.

But the Affordable Insulin Now Act will serve as a political vehicle to rally Democrats and force Republicans who oppose it into uncomfortable votes ahead of the midterms. For the legislation to pass Congress, 10 Republican senators would have to vote in favor. Democrats acknowledge they don’t have an answer for how that’s going to happen.

“If 10 Republicans stand between the American people being able to get access to affordable insulin, that’s a good question for 10 Republicans to answer,” said Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., a cosponsor of the House bill. “Republicans get diabetes, too. Republicans die from diabetes.”

Public opinion polls have consistently shown support across party lines for congressional action to limit drug costs.

But Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., complained the legislation is only “a small piece of a larger package around government price controls for prescription drugs.” Critics say the bill would raise premiums and fails to target pharmaceutical middlemen seen as contributing to high list prices for insulin.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Democrats could have a deal on prescription drugs if they drop their bid to authorize Medicare to negotiate prices. “Do Democrats really want to help seniors, or would they rather have the campaign issue?” Grassley said.

The insulin bill, which would take effect in 2023, represents just one provision of a much broader prescription drug package in President Joe Biden’s social and climate legislation.

In addition to a similar $35 cap on insulin, the Biden bill would authorize Medicare to negotiate prices for a range of drugs, including insulin. It would penalize drugmakers who raise prices faster than inflation and overhaul the Medicare prescription drug benefit to limit out-of-pocket costs for enrollees.

Biden’s agenda passed the House only to stall in the Senate because Democrats could not reach consensus. Party leaders haven’t abandoned hope of getting the legislation moving again, and preserving its drug pricing curbs largely intact.

The idea of a $35 monthly cost cap for insulin actually has a bipartisan pedigree. The Trump administration had created a voluntary option for Medicare enrollees to get insulin for $35, and the Biden administration continued it.

In the Senate, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire are working on a bipartisan insulin bill. Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has introduced legislation similar to the House bill, with the support of Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Stung by criticism that Biden’s economic policies spur inflation, Democrats are redoubling efforts to show how they’d help people cope with costs. On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported a key inflation gauge jumped 6.4% in February compared with a year ago, the largest year-over-year rise since January 1982.

But experts say the House bill would not help uninsured people, who face the highest out-of-pocket costs for insulin. Also, people with diabetes often take other medications as well as insulin. That’s done to treat the diabetes itself, along with other serious health conditions often associated with the disease. The House legislation would not help with those costs, either. Collins says she’s looking for a way to help uninsured people through her bill.

 

And that's the rub, the bill does absolutely nothing for capping costs for the uninsured. It's better than nothing, but there are still millions who are going to suffer, and Republicans will just make everyone suffer, because it's what they do.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

A federal judge today struck down several provisions of the state GOP's nightmarish voter suppression law, ordering the state placed under the Voting Rights Act's pre-clearance clause for blatantly unconstitutional acts.

 

In his decision issued Thursday, Judge Mark Walker ruled that the provisions in the law restricting drop boxes, creating new requirements for voter applications including vote-by-mail, and banning interactions with voters on line were unconstitutional and could not be enforced by the state. The law was a top priority of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The decision also put Florida under the “preclearance” provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act, a measure first used on mostly Southern states in the 1960s to prevent them from discriminating against minorities in the voting booth. Under it, the state would need federal court approval to make any revisions to its elections laws for the next 10 years.

Walker cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote about Americans not being “judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” but added that a few years later King said, “some of the old optimism was a little superficial and now it must be tempered with a solid realism.”

“While this Court lauds the idealism of Dr. King’s dream in 1963, this Court is not so naïve to believe that the Florida Legislature would not pass an intentionally discriminatory law in 2021,” Walker wrote. “We do not live in a colorblind society— not that this was ever Dr. King’s point.

“For the past 20 years, the majority in the Florida Legislature has attacked the voting rights of its Black constituents,” Walker wrote. “They have done so not as, in the words of Dr. King, ‘vicious racists, with [the] governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification,’ but as part of a cynical effort to suppress turnout among their opponents’ supporters. That, the law does not permit.”

 

This is a big win, but I expect it will be quickly blocked by the 11th Circuit for being too close to the primary elections.  You know, the ones in late August.

We'll see if this holds. It is a major win for today.

I don't think it will last..

The Burned Bridges Of Madison Cawthorn, Con't

NC GOP Rep Madison Cawthorn can't help himself, it seems. The youngest member of the US House can't stop acting like your obnoxious Gen Z co-worker who knows everything (of course) but won't stop pissing off the management, and it looks like this time he's gotten dragged into Principal McCarthy's office for ratting out the big after-prom party, and now the football team wants him gone.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is throwing his weight behind a primary opponent to freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn -- an extraordinary broadside against a fellow Republican from his home state, as internal frustration with the controversial MAGA firebrand reaches a boiling point. 

"It comes down to focus on the district, producing results for the district, and in my opinion, Mr. Cawthorn hasn't demonstrated much in the way of results over the last 18 months," Tillis told CNN, describing why he is backing state Sen. Chuck Edwards in his primary against Cawthorn. 

And Tillis may not be alone. Other GOP lawmakers who are at their wits' end with Cawthorn are considering endorsing one of his primary foes, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions, amid growing concerns that the North Carolina Republican is dragging down the entire party with his problematic behavior. The two most powerful North Carolina Republicans in the state legislature -- Senate leader Phil Berger and House speaker Tim Moore -- are headlining a fundraiser for Edwards on Thursday, according to the Edwards campaign. 

It's the latest sign of turmoil for the 26-year-old, who has angered and annoyed a wide swath of his colleagues with a steady stream of controversial antics and attempts to play political kingmaker in North Carolina and beyond. Most recently, Cawthorn sparked an uproar after claiming on a podcast that people in Washington have invited him to participate in orgies and used cocaine in front of him. Even fellow members of the House Freedom Caucus, a far-right crew with a penchant for controversy, have turned on Cawthorn: They've floated the idea of kicking him out of the group if he didn't clarify his wild accusations, according to GOP sources, though such a step seems unlikely. 

Amid complaints from members, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy hauled Cawthorn into his office Wednesday morning and pressed him on the unsettling allegations, which he said Cawthorn admitted were untrue, and told the freshman lawmaker he needs to get his act together or else he could face internal consequences. 

"He's got to turn himself around," McCarthy told reporters. "I just told him he's lost my trust, and he's going to have to earn it back. I laid out everything I find that's unbecoming. ... He's got a lot of members upset. You can't just make statements out there."

 

The whole Zack Morris/Principal Belding dynamic is fascinating on one level, but it just proves some people peaked in high school.

This is one example where a GOP primary fight may actually not produce a worse Republican, as the worse one is already in office.