Background Briefing: November 18, 2021

 

Big Pharma’s Blitz to Weaken Biden’s Build Back Better Bill

We begin with the onslaught from Big Pharma with 1,600 lobbyists dispatched to Congress along with deceptive ad campaigns on TV to water down provisions in the Build Back Better social infrastructure bill which will result in a new $35-per-month cap on insulin not beginning until 2023. And a $2,000 cap for all out-of-pocket drug spending for seniors that won’t be implemented until 2024, along with Medicare negotiating with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices of drugs that won’t happen until 2025 — with a full phase-in coming in 2028. Joining us is Jonathan Cohn, a senior correspondent at The Huffington Post who was formerly a senior editor at The New Republic and an executive editor of The American Prospect. The author of Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Healthcare Crisis–and the People Who Pay the Price and The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage, we discuss the advertising, lobbying and political donation tsunami from the pharmaceutical industry aimed at killing Biden’s and the Democrat’s bill.

 

The History of Combating Inflation and Replicating FDR Today

Then we investigate the history of combating inflation with Robert Hockett, who has first-hand experience working at the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He drafted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” resolution for the House of Representatives and officially advises her on economic policy and is the Edward Cornell Professor of Law and a Professor of Public Policy at Cornell University whose latest books are Money from Nothing Or, Why We Should Stop Worrying About Debt and Learn to Love the Federal Reserve and Financing the Green New Deal: A Plan of Action and Renewal. We discuss his 3 part series of articles at Forbes, ”War On Inflation” and FDR’s pairing of government and industry that could be replicated today to enable our country to quickly restore self-sufficiency, reclaim global industrial leadership, and prevent domestic price inflation by massively levering-up the nation’s productive capacity.

 

Can Democrats Overcome Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression to Win Texas?

Then finally with Beto O’Rourke entering the governor’s race in Texas along with Republican operative Matthew Dowd running as a Democrat for Lieutenant Governor, we speak with Matt Angle who directs the Texas Democratic Trust and the Lone Star Project. He has served as Executive Director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and we discuss what it will take for the Democrats to overcome gerrymandering and voter suppression in the Lone Star state that is trending blue.