Drug middlemen launch attacks against MAGA allies pushing for health care reforms



Pharmacy benefit managers like CVS are going after President Donald Trump's allies who are seeking meaningful health care reforms for their constituents.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) have become the primary target of PBMs, which are threatened by their push to implement reforms in drug costs. Threatened by MAGA allies, PBMs have now escalated these conflicts to legal disputes.

'These massive corporations are attacking our state because we will be the first in the country to hold them accountable.'

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  Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

In April, Huckabee Sanders signed legislation banning PBMs from "engaging in anticompetitive practices" by owning pharmacies. PBMs are tasked with negotiating drug prices between pharmacies and insurance companies, but by buying up pharmacies, they are able to take advantage of the health care system and inflate the cost of pharmaceuticals, pushing competitors out of business, according to Huckabee Sanders' press release.

“For far too long, drug middlemen called PBMs have taken advantage of lax regulations to abuse customers, inflate drug prices, and cut off access to critical medications," Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Not any more. These massive corporations are attacking our state because we will be the first in the country to hold them accountable for their anticompetitive actions, but Arkansas has never been afraid to be a conservative leader for America.”

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association promptly retaliated and filed a lawsuit challenging the legislation, calling it a "fundamentally flawed law" that they say "could shutter pharmacies, restrict access to critical medications for patients and families, increase health care costs, and eliminate jobs."

RELATED: Pharmacy middlemen didn’t break health care — the feds did

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Landry has become involved in his own legal disputes with PBMs. Landry, alongside Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, filed three separate lawsuits against CVS in June for allegedly interfering with legislation that also would have prevented PBMs from owning and simultaneously operating pharmacies.

"PBMs are not health care providers," Landry said. "They are corporate profiteers inserted into the most intimate part of your life and your health."

Although several of Trump's allies have been targeted by PBMs, criticism of the pharmaceutical industry is generally bipartisan.

Mark Cuban recently called out Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for claiming that Big Pharma is responsible for high drug costs when, he says, PBMs are the real culprit.

"It's because PBMs corrupt healthcare," Cuban said in a post on X. "Big Pharma wishes they could set their own pricing. They don't. PBMs control formularies and manipulate prices, in exchange for providing pharma access to patients. It's how they maximize rebate revenue. In fact, 3 PBMs NEGOTIATE MORE THAN 90% OF REBATES for commercial insurance plans. That's your area of expertise, and you have done nothing."

Cuban's criticisms promptly earned the unlikely praise of some of the most prominent voices in MAGA world.

"Didn’t think I’d be RTing Mark for a while, but he’s 100% right on this issue," Donald Trump Jr. replied in a post on X.

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Republicans Doing Nothing Could Actually Yield A Win, For Once

'A whopping 40 states' residents saw an over 100% rise in their monthly premiums'

When bureaucrats rule, even red states go woke



If it’s happening in Georgia, you can bet it’s happening all over the country. Embedded bureaucrats are quietly rewriting the policies voters put in place.

Georgia’s Medicaid program exists to serve the state’s most vulnerable — low-income children and foster youth, pregnant women, and disabled adults. It was never meant to be a vehicle for radical politics. But recent revelations about how the state awarded multibillion-dollar Medicaid contracts show exactly how far left-wing ideologues inside government agencies will go to push their agenda.

When the bureaucracy pushes a progressive agenda behind closed doors, the public has no choice but to push back. Loudly. Clearly. Immediately.

Internal documents reveal that senior staff at Georgia’s Department of Community Health inserted ideological land mines into the bidding process for companies seeking to serve more than 1 million Medicaid recipients — most of them children. This included a scenario question focused on how insurers would treat a hypothetical “fourteen (14) year-old, transgender White female (assigned male sex at birth but identifies as a female).”

Responses that didn’t align with leftist orthodoxy were penalized. In other words, companies lost points unless they promised to steer kids toward hormone therapy — despite state laws banning gender reassignment procedures for minors. That isn’t just dishonest. It’s a direct subversion of the law.

Just this year, Georgia’s legislature passed bills barring men from girls’ sports and locker rooms. But inside the state’s Medicaid agency, officials rewarded insurers for endorsing gender transitions for minors. One winning bidder justified its position by claiming such treatments “could come up in the future.” Never mind that they’re illegal in Georgia.

One losing insurer offered to connect the hypothetical child with a range of community resources, including faith-based organizations. That response was met with scorn. A state official actually complained that faith-based groups shouldn’t have been included — because they weren’t mentioned in the scenario.

Never mind that faith-based organizations have served Medicaid populations for decades. They often provide the only consistent care in struggling communities. But for these bureaucrats, churches and people of faith pose a bigger danger to kids than radical gender ideology.

This is no small issue. Georgia expects to spend $4.5 billion next year on Medicaid and PeachCare, the program for uninsured kids. That makes this one of the largest contracts in state history — and leftist staffers nearly hijacked the entire process.

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 Photographer: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Lawmakers have a duty to step in now. During the last session, they considered a bill that would have barred ideologically charged questions from state procurements. It didn’t pass. That needs to change.

There’s still time. The Medicaid contracts haven’t been finalized. Legislators must act. They should demand a full rebid, remove these radical questions, and ensure that reviewers score responses based on biology, patient welfare, and fiscal responsibility — not on whether companies genuflect to left-wing doctrine.

Georgia’s leadership has worked hard to uphold conservative values and protect taxpayer dollars. But as we’ve seen in Washington, unelected bureaucrats can — and will — undermine that progress if no one stops them.

When the bureaucracy pushes a progressive agenda behind closed doors, the public has no choice but to push back. Loudly. Clearly. Immediately. We must call it out, correct course, and pass the kind of reforms that ensure this never happens again.

GOP’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill Act’ lets Big Tech and Big Pharma run wild



The Republicans’ bizarrely named “Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes two egregious provisions that would strip states of their power to regulate key agenda items pushed by globalist elites.

Anyone who still understands what the word “conservative” means can see the truth: The Republican budget bill is a mixed bag of deficit bloat, missed opportunities, and the odd policy win. Whether the House bill was worth passing as a “take it or leave it” deal depends on one’s political calculus. But the result is underwhelming and fails to rise to the moment.

Stripping states of authority and subsidizing green fantasies are the exact opposite of the anti-globalist message that won Trump the White House.

Supporters of the bill — particularly President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — argue that it’s the best possible outcome given a razor-thin House majority packed with RINOs from purple districts in blue states. Set aside that debate. If it’s true, then conservatives should focus their energies in deep-red states where Republicans hold supermajorities. That’s where we can — and must — do the work Congress won’t.

Instead, Republican leaders included two provisions in the bill that actively prevent red states from pushing back against green energy mandates, land-grabs, surveillance schemes, and a growing transhumanist agenda.

Green New Deal jam-down

Thanks to Republican Freedom Caucus stalwarts, including Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland and Chip Roy of Texas, much of the Green New Deal faces rollback — assuming, of course, the Senate doesn’t block the repeal. But one key subsidy survives: federal incentives for carbon capture pipelines. Worse still, the bill strengthens protections for these projects by stripping states of regulatory power.

Section 41006 spells it out: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law,” once the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission grants a pipeline license under an newly amended section of the Natural Gas Act, state and local governments can no longer block or delay the project using zoning, permitting, or land-use laws.

In plain English: carbon dioxide pipelines, backed by federal subsidies, get the same privileges as oil and gas pipelines. That includes eminent domain powers and “certificate of public convenience and necessity” status — bureaucratic code for “we’ll take your land whether you like it or not.”

But carbon pipelines aren’t oil and gas. Oil fuels the economy and delivers a clear public good. Carbon capture, by contrast, sucks up CO2 and buries it to appease climate hysterics. It serves no market need and survives only through government handouts. It exists to sanctify the fiction that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

This isn’t an oversight. It’s a direct response to South Dakota ranchers, who successfully fought to ban eminent domain for carbon capture projects. Lawmakers in Iowa and North Dakota have followed suit, targeting Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed pipeline, which would have plowed through private ranchland to serve a project with no public value.

The rebellion in South Dakota ranks among the most important conservative grassroots victories in recent history. Yet this bill spits in the face of those landowners. It overrides red-state laws and rural rights on behalf of globalist, green-energy profiteers.

A 10-year pause on state bans

Funny how Republicans said budget reconciliation couldn’t include policy changes. That was the excuse for not pursuing immigration reform or judicial restructuring. And yet when it suits the priorities of Big Tech and globalist interests, lawmakers found a way to insert sweeping federal mandates into the bill.

Out of nowhere, either the White House or GOP lawmakers added a provision banning states from regulating artificial intelligence or data center systems. Section 43201 of the bill states: “No State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”

That’s not compromise. That’s total pre-emption — no exceptions.

Florida and other red states have already passed laws prohibiting the use of AI in enforcing gun control or violating medical privacy. More states are following suit. Legislatures across the country are debating how to safeguard civil liberties and property rights from tech overreach. But this bill would kneecap every one of those efforts.

Then come the AI data centers — massive, power-hungry, water-consuming facilities that are cropping up in rural areas and harming communities in their wake. Bipartisan state efforts aim to regulate them through zoning and environmental protections. Yet under this bill, Congress could override even the most basic local safeguards. If a township tries to limit where these centers operate or how they’re built, that could be viewed as “regulating AI systems” and thus outlawed for a decade.

Why does this matter? Because tech moguls aren’t hiding their intentions.

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  Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

At Trump’s January 22 launch event for Oracle’s Stargate platform, CEO Larry Ellison gushed about mRNA vaccines. “One of the most exciting things we’re working on ... is our cancer vaccine,” he said. “Using AI, we can detect cancers through blood tests and produce an mRNA vaccine robotically in about 48 hours.” That’s the model. AI plus big data plus biotech equals unregulated medical experimentation — powered by infrastructure no local government can block.

Red states have started pushing back, attempting to pass 10-year moratoriums on mRNA technology. But the federal budget bill would do the opposite: It could impose a 10-year federal moratorium on state bans.

So here’s the question: Do we really want Arab-funded special interests building AI spying centers in our heartland with no recourse for state and local governments to regulate, restrict, or place common-sense privacy guardrails on these new Towers of Babel?

That question raises another: Should localities be forced to accept carbon pipelines by federal decree, with no power to defend their land or water?

These policies — stripping states of authority, empowering transnational corporations, subsidizing green and biotech fantasies — are the exact opposite of the anti-globalist, America First message that won Trump the White House and won Republicans the House.

We deserve answers. Who inserted these provisions? And more urgently, who will take them out?

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Trump takes aim again at prescription drug prices — could drop '30% to 80%'



President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he would be signing an executive order to cut prescription prices "almost immediately, by 30% to 80%."

The vehicle for these price reductions will be a new "MOST FAVORED NATION'S POLICY" mandating that the U.S. pays the same price for drugs as whichever country pays the lowest price globally.

Trump has long discussed using an index of international drug prices — in countries such as Canada, Britain, and Japan — to set the price that Medicare would ultimately pay for drugs administered stateside by doctors. The plan, and related legislative initiatives, faced significant opposition by the pharmaceutical industry and its bipartisan allies in Congress.

After signing a slew of executive orders in 2020 aimed at controlling and lowering drug prices, Trump issued an order on Sept. 13, 2020, seeking to establish most favored nation pricing for Medicare drug payments and to ensure that "Americans [do] not bear extra burdens to compensate for the shortfalls that result from the nationalized public healthcare systems of wealthy countries abroad."

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services subsequently issued an interim final rule implementing the executive order, which multiple pharmaceutical industry trade groups sued to kill.

Not long after courts blocked the most favored nation rule, the Biden administration rescinded it.

Trump evidently figures he has a better shot this time around, even though many of the price reduction plan's opponents are still in office.

'We are going to do the right thing, something that the Democrats have fought for many years.'

"For many years the World has wondered why Prescription Drugs and Pharmaceuticals in the United States of America were SO MUCH HIGHER IN PRICE THAN THEY WERE IN ANY OTHER NATION, SOMETIMES BEING FIVE TO TEN TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE SAME DRUG, MANUFACTURED IN THE EXACT SAME LABORATORY OR PLANT, BY THE SAME COMPANY?" the president wrote on Truth Social. "It was always difficult to explain and very embarrassing because, in fact, there was no correct or rightful answer."

According to recent analysis conducted by RAND Health Care on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. drug prices for both brands and generics were nearly 2.78 times as high as prices in comparison countries. Even after adjustments for American rebates, U.S. prices for brand drugs were apparently at least 3.22 times as high as in other countries.

"The Pharmaceutical/Drug Companies would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs, and that all of these costs were, and would be, for no reason whatsoever, borne by the 'suckers' of America, ALONE," continued Trump. "Campaign Contributions can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party. We are going to do the right thing, something that the Democrats have fought for many years."

'It jeopardizes the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America.'

Trump noted that while relative costs will come down for American buyers, they will "rise throughout the World in order to equalize and, for the first time in many years, bring FAIRNESS TO AMERICA!"

Big Pharma lobbyists began complaining in advance of Trump signing the executive order, which the president indicated last week would be "one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject."

"This Foreign First Pricing scheme is a bad deal for American patients. Importing foreign prices will cut billions of dollars from Medicare with no guarantee that it helps patients or improves their access to medicines," Stephen Ubl, the CEO of the lobbying group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement obtained by The Hill.

"It jeopardizes the hundreds of billions our member companies are planning to invest in America, making us more reliant on China for innovative medicines," added Ubl.

Trump has already taken action on the drug pricing front this year, directing his administration in February to increase enforcement of drug price transparency requirements and to promote "universal access to clear and accurate healthcare prices."

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The billion-dollar health scam lawmakers refuse to shut down



Americans aren’t stupid. Polls show that only 18% have a favorable view of the pharmaceutical industry, while 60% hold a negative opinion. Though hospitals fare better, their rating is also declining — and it’s no wonder.

Recent reporting from the Guardian has shed light on the predatory tactics used by monopoly hospitals like Parkview Health in Indiana. These institutions exploit patients when they are most vulnerable, charging exorbitant prices with little oversight or accountability.

Banning prior authorization could cost patients and taxpayers billions of dollars.

Rising health care costs are affecting hundreds of Hoosiers. In his 2025 State of the State address, Gov. Mike Braun acknowledged that many families worry about affording necessary medical care. Meanwhile, the reasons behind the relentless price increases have remained unclear — until now.

News reports reveal that regional hospitals have tapped into what they see as “unlimited dollars” by pushing unnecessary, high-cost treatments. These findings help explain why health care prices continue to spiral out of control.

Health care’s dirtiest secret

A heroic whistleblower — a former doctor — has revealed one of the health care industry’s dirtiest secrets: Doctors regularly prescribe invasive surgeries for minor issues to secure bigger bonuses. “Somebody comes in with knee arthritis and basically they’re having pain, but they haven’t had any other treatment,” he told the Guardian. “These guys will jump right to a knee replacement surgery.”

Another Parkview employee, an office manager who worked in the system for over a decade, explained why doctors would do such a thing: “The more you code, the higher you code, the more credit you get, which would translate to bonuses.”

This is unacceptable. Hoosier doctors are penalized for choosing safer, lower-cost options over the highest-cost ones — even if they’re harmful to patients — just to pad Parkview’s $1.66 billion in reserves.

This pattern isn’t limited to surgeries. Research shows that 34% of older adults are prescribed potentially inappropriate drugs, which can pose serious health risks and needlessly drive up costs.

Demand prior authorization

Fortunately, prior authorization serves as a critical safeguard against unnecessary and costly medical treatments. This process requires doctors to submit clinical information to a patient’s insurance company before approving expensive or unusual procedures and medications. By rejecting inappropriate requests, insurers help protect patients from unnecessary care and prevent billions of dollars in wasted health care spending.

Some Indiana lawmakers want to ban or severely limit prior authorization despite its benefits. But the state legislature has no reason to hinder or dilute this critical patient protection from the health care industry’s dirty money-making scheme.

While doctors may find prior authorization paperwork frustrating, it plays a vital role in preventing waste, fraud, and abuse — problems that plague the health care system. An estimated 25% of all health care spending, roughly $935 billion annually, is wasted. Eliminating prior authorization in private insurance could saddle Hoosier patients and taxpayers with billions in unnecessary costs, placing an even greater financial burden on working families and small businesses.

A national issue

Indiana is already experiencing a $1 billion Medicaid shortfall. The state cannot afford an additional $6 billion in health care costs over the next decade by banning prior authorization. Yet the legislature is still considering it.

The Indiana Senate Appropriations Committee has advanced a bill to limit the use of prior authorization in state health plans, but key provisions were stripped from the original proposal due to fiscal concerns.

This problem extends beyond Indiana. Lawmakers nationwide should focus on real solutions to our health care crisis rather than handing out favors to bad actors. Hospitals should be incentivized to serve their communities, not enabled to exploit them.

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