~by Colleen O’Brien
Before his tearing down the East Wing, before his renaming the Kennedy Center, before his bombing of fishing boats in the Caribbean and stealing a sovereign country’s leader and wife, before his posting a photo of Obama and Michelle as gorillas, before his “excursion” into the Middle East – actually, before he was elected – Trump promised to bring down prescription drug costs.
On September 16, 2025 (officially documented and reported on Sept. 30, 2025), he decided to make his promise look good by inviting the big drug bosses to the Oval Office. He called the get-together a “most-favored-nation” party to ensure that the guests knew that no one was going to charge less than the others.
It was really just a photo op to lie to Americans that he was doing something for us. Sixteen of the top Pharma mavens shook the hand of the president that day on a promise to price drugs fairly, and between Jan 1 and Jan 9, 2026, all companies increased drug prices.
His promises as well as his handshakes mean nothing, and he’s incurably vain, so he couldn’t resist having the cozy get-together photographed, proof that he was doing something for the American public.
And even though we know that Congress is the only entity that could possibly fix drug prices, we were dumb enough to believe he’d actually made drug prices go down.
The lowering of drug prices for the citizens of America did not happen because of a handshake with the tiniest hand, both physically and metaphorically, in the world of politics.
When it comes to drug prices, I am witness.
I take a drug for rheumatoid arthritis that is paid for by CHAMPVA [Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs]. My husband, a Vietnam veteran, died of the effects of Agent Orange about four decades after the poison was sprayed over him and all the rest of Vietnam to desiccate the forests so we could more easily find and kill communists. For having been his wife, I, 12 years after his death and 56 years after his exposure to a killer herbicide, received from the government a small stipend and Rx coverage.
In May of last year, because of a mix-up at a pharmacy, I learned that my drug was going to cost me $1500 for 30 pills. I laughed out loud [surprise, fright, nervousness?], then told the pharmacy to look thoroughly into my account, where they found that it wasn’t up to an insurance company but to the VA to cover the cost. I knew an American insurance company would not pay that amount – at least not on the premium I paid monthly – and that the VA was paying for it.
It’s just that I did not know until then what the drug cost because the pharmacy had never before made the mistake of charging a feeble health insurance company for it. (They, the feeble insurance company, had a letter in my mailbox in two days after they were mistakenly asked to pay for my Rx: they were that scared that I somehow might figure out how to make them pay.)
Since then, I have learned from the VA some of what it has paid over a brief period: $1,493 for April 2025, $1,555 for May 2025, $5,206 for June 2025 . . . and so on . . . to $7,688.54 for the month of March 2026.
Almost $7,000 for 30 pills. Thanx, Prez. Oh, and the drug lord of Pfizer who shook your hand, a Dr. Albert Bourla, CEO of manufacturing Xeljanz, my gold-dust pill. At that meeting, Dr. Bourla said, “The big winner of this deal clearly will be the American patient. There is no doubt about it.”
There is a lot of doubt, Doc, but I don’t see how I can get favored nation status for my life-saving pill Xeljanz. For your information, a few of the companies run by very rich men, friends of our rich president, include these familiar names – Merck, Johnson and Johnson, Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Novo Nordisk.
