Biden is fine. A lot of people are looking for someone who is going to revolutionize things overnight. A lot of folks also like to give the President blame or credit for things out of his control. Overall I’ve been pleasantly surprised. All I really wanted was not Trump, but Biden has been a lot better than that.

the truth is, biden and his peers are conservatives who do not believe that healthcare is a right. its only for those that can afford it. They attempt to appease the masses with these generous rebates on life saving drugs.

if the powers that be really cared about humans they would be pushing mass changes to the entire system, not placating businesses by keeping prices high while also pretending to negotiate for the unwashed.

follow the money, and all the money says "we dont care about healthcare or human beings"

that whole line about "but we cant affect change overnight. those crazy progressives!". motherfucker, ive been waiting 40+ years for them to do fucking anything that didnt line some providers pockets.

current democrats are fucking useless.

To borrow a couple of lines written for the UK in the 60s:

Say, the time is right for palace revolution
But where I live the game to play is compromise solution

Biden is a well meaning old man whittling away at the problems the best he can within the rules of the system. The problem is that the system has been rigged against working people for at least 40 years now; some people feel the problems go deeper than what you can solve by being by the book and doing politics as usual.

If we pretend Trump wasn’t a thing, I’d say Biden is really living up to his campaign promise of “nothing will fundamentally change.” By that I mean, he hasn’t personally done anything amazing or terrible, and he hasn’t gotten in the way of others, either.

For instance, this has the fingerprints of Bernie Sanders all over it, who chairs several committees in congress, including the relevant one for this. Has Biden stopped Bernie Sanders? No, and while I wish that fact wasn’t a win, it is.

Bernie isn’t alone in being the only good thing about our current government, either, but Biden also hasn’t removed some of the terrible things the trump administration set up. The Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back a bunch of things I’m very upset about. It is my personal belief that he’s heavily influenced by certain groups (insurance) but is trying in other areas.

Biden isn’t at all supporting policies that are just common sense if you live anywhere else, and while the UK isn’t the best, I’ve discussed this with a British friend and I still include them in that. In short, you have more protections from your government that they need to try to remove first.

In my opinion if Biden had been elected after Obama or after a normal Republican he would’ve basically had a quiet presidency and been one of the ones you don’t really mention in history because nothing happened. Standard calls for corruption, but not worse than any regular senators. In today’s world, that’s positive, with Republican candidates promising to abolish the department of education, but in another world where things aren’t full of neonazis and fascists, I’d be saying it’s awful, because I would have wanted a president that would change things for the better, and now I’m just beaten down enough to be ok with “Nothing will fundamentally change.”

I feel like he isn’t a deranged narcissist who would nuke his own country if it somehow benefited him.

Don’t forget that we have right of center (democrats), right (republicans) and left of center (bernie sanders).

Democrats are still rich and love the lobby money.

Clintons have invested in privatizing prisons for example.

It’s not just the republicans that take advantage if the single ideology vote.

Things are better than they were under Trump in that our head of state is no longer an overt bigot that tends towards embarrassing antics. It’s more like how things were before. The problem is the way things were before sucked. So it looks better but still is a neoliberal cesspool on this side of the pond.

But at least we can still get a few hundred varieties of potato chips! We’re fine!

To me, Biden is like a bandage to stop the bleeding the Republicans were inflicting. When you are bleeding out, you don’t really care what the bandage looks like or whether or not it’s the perfect bandage. Now that the bandage has stopped the worst of the bleeding, I’m going to be a little pickier.

Where are all of the “think of the children” folk? Not important now that they’re born.

The problem is the government can’t set the price of goods in a private contract between two non-government entities, which is what would need to happen. The various bills you see in states setting co-pay caps is about as close as we can get, and that only happens because the government CAN regulate insurance companies and the policies they offer. While that might, eventually, put pressure on the insurance companies to demand lower prices from the manufacturers, it’s a long way disconnected from the price paid by the patient.

And regulating copays doesn’t help people without insurance at all.

That’s why this is such an important step. When prescription coverage was added to Medicare, the ability of the government to negotiate drug prices was specifically striped from the bill. The Inflation Reduction Act added it back, finally. And it’s a huge win. Medicare and Medicaid are enormous programs, and when they throw their weight around, they can affect the markets they’re in dramatically. It’s why the drug companies are already filing suit.

But the real solution isn’t trying to force private insurance companies to play ball, or make drug manufacturers sell at a low price, it’s to leverage that giant market pressure and expand Medicare eligibility to everyone. And if you’re worried about funding? Don’t be. Unlike social security, Medicare’s tax has no maximum wage.

I buy my epipens illegally. I was without insurance for a little bit and instead of paying $650, I found a person on Reddit that sold me 2x for $50 and I’m still in contact with that person today whenever my pens expire or I use or lose one. I still go that route with insurance because damn the man. Not like that makes a difference to them, but it makes me feel better hahaha.

They throw a few million in the right pockets and they make billions in return, best investment they ever made.

" Wealthy residents raise $60,000 to stop homeless shelter being built in San Francisco", was a headline last week.

It’s not just an 'industry" thing. It’s a "people"thing

It’s not illegal because it isn’t illegal to set a price that the market can bear.

They’re not increasing prices for just one group of people, which may or may not be illegal, but rather setting a price for a given product.

This is the crux of why this has been such a tough nut to crack.

I thought the issue was that it wasn’t legal for the gov to negotiate prices?

big pharma overcharges the USA by a lot

A single months supply vial of insulin cost less to manufacture than a child’s Happy Meal