The Great American Drug Swindle: Trump's Plan

Voices of a Diverse America: May 12th, 2025

The stench of bullshit wafts through the White House once again. Trumpty McFartFace, our newly reinstalled Commander-in-Chief, stands at his podium, bloated with self-importance, practically salivating as he announces his "consequential" executive order to allegedly slash prescription drug prices by 30% to 80%. The crowd of sycophants claps, the MAGA hats bob in unison, and America's sick and elderly are sold another snake oil promise that will ultimately poison them instead.

Let me be brutally fucking honest here: this executive order isn't just misguided—it's a dangerous theatrical performance designed to mask the true beneficiaries: Big Pharma executives who likely had their manicured hands all over the drafting process. I can practically smell the champagne being uncorked in boardrooms across the pharmaceutical industry.

Promises, Lies, and Videotape

The Truth Social post reads like a fever dream from a man high on his own supply of delusion. "REDUCED, almost immediately, by 30% to 80%," he bellows in all caps, digital spittle flying from his virtual mouth. The raw audacity of these claims should make your skin crawl. Let's dissect this festering corpse of policy to understand why Americans are being sold a rotting carcass dressed up as filet mignon.

First, let's taste the bitter reality: this executive order's primary function isn't to help you afford your heart medication or insulin. It's to create the illusion of action while maintaining the status quo that keeps pharmaceutical executives in Italian sports cars and vacation homes in the Hamptons.

The proposed "Most Favored Nation" policy sounds impressive until you realize it's just reheated leftovers from his previous administration—an approach that was blocked by courts and never implemented. Want to know why? Because it was a half-assed, poorly conceived plan then, and it remains so now. It's like promising a five-course meal and serving a moldy sandwich.

When Donaldo Shitsburger claims prices will be "REDUCED, almost immediately," he's serving up a steaming plate of deception. The executive order he's signed merely directs agencies to develop plans to potentially reduce prices someday. There's nothing "immediate" about a bureaucratic process that could take years to implement—if it happens at all.

Who Will Suffer the Most?

My stomach churns with acid as I read between the lines of this executive order. Let me walk you through why this plan is fucking disastrous:

1. The Pharmaceutical Industry Already Has Countermeasures Ready

Picture this: you're in a pharmaceutical boardroom. The CEO, whose bonus depends on maintaining profit margins that would make a loan shark blush, receives news of the executive order. Does he panic? Fuck no. He smiles because the industry has already gamed this system before it even begins.

Pharmaceutical companies can easily manipulate international reference pricing by creating confidential rebate schemes in other countries, making the "lowest price" an elaborate shell game that regulatory agencies can't track. It's like playing three-card monte with a hustler who owns the table, the cards, and has already bribed the cops.

The cold, clinical truth is that drug makers have contingency plans for exactly this scenario. They'll find ways to maintain their profits by shifting costs elsewhere or delaying the introduction of new treatments to the American market. The damp, rancid smell of corporate strategy rooms permeates this entire charade.

2. The "Pill Penalty" Provision Benefits Big Pharma, Not Patients

When you dive deep into the executive order's murky waters, you'll find a provision that actually favors pharmaceutical companies by addressing what they call the "pill penalty." This would align the timeline for price negotiations for small molecule drugs (pills) with more complex biological products (often injections).

This might sound technical and boring, but here's what it means in human terms: it allows pharmaceutical companies to maintain monopoly pricing for longer periods on the most commonly used medications. The metallic taste of corporate victory should be filling your mouth right now.

Reuters reported this clear industry win: "Trump cannot implement the change through executive order because the negotiation process is outlined in legislation, but his order instructs Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work with Congress on changing it." In other words, this executive order is just the first step in a longer campaign to weaken existing drug price controls.

3. International Price Models Aren't Designed for the American System

The squishy, uncomfortable truth is that trying to graft foreign drug pricing models onto the American healthcare system is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole using a sledgehammer and chewing gum.

The American healthcare system isn't just broken—it's a grotesque Frankenstein's monster of private interests, bureaucratic inefficiency, and profit-driven care. Foreign pricing models work within completely different healthcare frameworks, often with centralized negotiating power and universal coverage.

The tangy, acrid scent of false equivalency permeates this whole approach. You can't cherry-pick pricing policies from systems fundamentally different from our own and expect them to work. It's like buying an engine part for a Ferrari and expecting it to fix your Ford pickup.

Now Who Gets Fucked AFTER That?

While Trumpty McFartFace stands at his podium promising savings, let's be viscerally clear about who gets fucked by this executive order:

1. Patients with Immediate Needs

For the cancer patient rationing their medications now, for the diabetic choosing between insulin and food today, for the elderly person cutting pills in half this week—this executive order offers nothing but distant, vague hopes. There's no immediate relief, just the echo of empty promises bouncing off hospital walls.

The cold reality is that many won't survive the waiting period for these changes to take effect—if they ever do. The bitter taste of abandonment lingers in the mouths of those who needed help yesterday, not in some hypothetical future.

2. Medicare's Long-Term Stability

This haphazard approach to drug pricing threatens Medicare's already precarious financial future. By avoiding comprehensive reform in favor of flashy, headline-grabbing executive orders, we're treating a systemic cancer with a fucking Band-Aid.

Medicare Rights Center noted that if implemented poorly, this approach could actually undermine existing negotiation frameworks that have shown promise. The executive order seems designed to sabotage parts of the Inflation Reduction Act that enabled Medicare to begin negotiating drug prices for the first time.

3. Innovation for Treatments of Common Diseases

When pricing policies create perverse incentives, pharmaceutical research follows the money. By potentially equalizing the timeline for negotiation eligibility between small molecule drugs and biologics, the executive order could push research away from affordable pill-form medications that treat common conditions toward expensive biologics that treat rarer diseases and command higher prices.

The sticky, uncomfortable truth is that this could mean fewer innovations for heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions that affect millions, while research dollars flow toward treatments for smaller patient populations that can sustain sky-high prices.

What Will Happen to ACA and Medicaid

This executive order isn't an isolated incident—it's merely the latest pustule on the diseased body of Republican healthcare policy. Let's not forget that this is the same party that has repeatedly tried to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without offering a viable replacement, leaving millions potentially uninsured.

The rank hypocrisy reaches new levels when you consider that Trump's first administration repeatedly tried and failed to implement similar measures. The Most Favored Nation approach was proposed, abandoned, revived, legally challenged, and ultimately shelved. Now it's being resurrected like a zombie policy, shambling forward with new makeup but the same rotten core.

The bitter bile of deception rises in my throat when I think about how this administration continues to sell empty healthcare promises while actively working to undermine the structures that protect Americans from the worst abuses of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

We Wont Get Fooled Again

There's something almost perversely intimate about watching Americans fall for the same con over and over again. The vulnerable opening their arms to embrace promises that will ultimately strangle them. The desperate clinging to hope that this time—this fucking time—things will be different.

You can almost feel the coarse texture of disappointment that will inevitably rub against the skin of those who believe these claims. The warm, wet despair that will pool in the eyes of elderly Americans when they realize their prescription costs haven't dropped by 80%, or 30%, or even 3%.

The executive order, like so many before it, is political foreplay without the satisfaction of actual policy climax. It's all tease, no release. The American public is left frustrated, unfulfilled, and still paying obscene prices for medications that cost a fraction elsewhere.

The Real Solutions To This Problem

If Donny McFartsalot and his administration were serious about lowering drug prices—and not just performing for their base—here's what real solutions would look like:

1. Strengthen, Don't Weaken, Medicare Negotiation Powers

Instead of trying to undermine the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program established by the Inflation Reduction Act, a serious administration would expand and strengthen it. Give Medicare the power to negotiate prices for ALL drugs, not just a select few, and remove the arbitrary waiting periods before negotiations can begin.

The crisp clarity of this approach would send pharmaceutical stocks tumbling—which is precisely why it won't happen under an administration more concerned with corporate bottom lines than human lives.

2. Allow Drug Importation From Certified International Pharmacies

Canada, the European Union, and other developed regions have safe, effective medication at a fraction of U.S. prices. A real solution would create a streamlined certification process for international pharmacies and allow Americans to import medications legally and safely.

The refreshing simplicity of this approach—already working for Americans who cross borders to fill prescriptions—stands in stark contrast to the convoluted, industry-friendly proposals in the executive order.

3. End Patent Abuse and Pay-for-Delay Schemes

Pharmaceutical companies routinely extend their monopolies through minor reformulations and legal tricks, blocking generic competition that would lower prices. They even pay potential competitors to delay bringing cheaper alternatives to market.

A serious administration would crack down on these abuses with the ferocity of a starving wolf. The sharp teeth of antitrust enforcement should be sinking deep into the flesh of these anti-competitive practices.

Well…..

As Donald McStinkTrump's executive order slithers through the federal bureaucracy, Americans are left wondering what will actually change. Will prices drop "almost immediately" as promised? History, logic, and the basic laws of reality suggest otherwise.

What's more likely is a prolonged period of regulatory development, industry lobbying, legal challenges, and ultimately, minimal impact on the prices Americans pay at the pharmacy counter. The slick, oily feel of disappointment is already coating this policy, even in its infancy.

But here's the truly terrifying part: while Americans wait for this executive order to work its non-existent magic, real opportunities for reform are being squandered. Every day spent on half-measures and performative policy is another day people suffer, another day the system remains fundamentally broken.

The complete truth is hiding in plain sight, pulsing beneath the shiny veneer of presidential announcements and Truth Social posts: This administration has no intention of truly challenging the pharmaceutical industry's pricing power. They're engaged in elaborate theater while the back-room deals continue unabated.

America Deserves Better

The hot, heavy truth we must all face is that Americans deserve a healthcare system that doesn't bankrupt them, doesn't force impossible choices between medication and food, and doesn't value corporate profits over human lives.

This executive order isn't just a failure—it's a betrayal. It betrays the millions who voted believing that their healthcare costs would truly be addressed. It betrays the fundamental principle that government should serve the people, not corporate donors. It betrays the very concept of honesty in governance.

When Donald McStinkface stands at his podium shouting about "FAIRNESS TO AMERICA!" while pushing policies that protect industry profits, the stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming. It crawls into your nostrils, down your throat, and settles in your gut like spoiled meat.

Americans will continue to pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world while their president claims victory over a problem he's barely addressed. The bitter pill of this reality cannot be sweetened by all-caps social media posts or grandiose signing ceremonies.

This is the raw, unfiltered truth: The prescription drug pricing executive order is a sham, a deception, a magic trick with no actual magic—just misdirection and empty promises. And Americans will pay for this charade with their money, their health, and sometimes, their lives.