Trump Failures Worsening Coronavirus Nightmare

The coronavirus pandemic has forced people all over the country to endure suffering, pain, and tragedy for the better part of 2020, but now science has finally given the nation some reason for optimism. Multiple biotechnology companies have reported they have safe effective coronavirus vaccines on the way.

Pfizer
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, Moderna, and now AstraZeneca each have vaccines with efficacy results of 90% or better in late-stage trials. The vaccine news has offered Americans exactly what we have been craving for the entirety of this pandemic marathon: an apparent finish line.

To be sure, the pandemic will be challenging until these vaccines are available to the general public at some point in the spring of next year. With the end seemingly in sight, a brighter spotlight is now shining on the Trump administration’s ineffective response to the coronavirus.

As with many aspects of his presidency, Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been shortsighted, ineffective, and politically motivated. Each step he took, or didn’t take, was framed around his reelection.

Trump hoped to minimize the seriousness of the virus in order to prop up the stock market and the economy in an election year. Throughout the year Trump also picked fights with disease experts for promoting masks and criticized Joe Biden, among countless others, for wearing masks as late as October.

Similarly, Trump attacked pharmaceutical companies throughout his campaign and pointed to flawed executive orders designed to lower American drug prices by tying them to foreign markets. These executive orders were his attempt to manufacture a win by going back to a 2016 campaign promise to lower prescription drug prices in the US.

However, these orders did little to help American consumers and only served to create an artificial war against US companies battling to discover therapeutics and vaccines to overcome the coronavirus.

The great irony of Trump’s 2020 campaign is that Trump’s reelection prospects were more aligned with the welfare of the American public than he realized. Had Trump launched a serious response to address the coronavirus from the beginning, listened to the scientists, promoted mask wearing, and supported the researchers and developers working tirelessly to produce drugs and vaccines to defeat the coronavirus, Trump would have been in a better position to be reelected and may have won.

Unfortunately for Americans, the battle against the coronavirus is not yet over and we are still several months away from mass distribution of coronavirus vaccines.

Even now that President Trump has lost re-election, he continues on with his pattern of shortsighted, ineffective and politically motivated policies to address the pandemic.

On Friday, Trump announced a most favored nation policy aimed at lowering drug prices in Medicare Part B by tying American drug prices to foreign markets. With this executive order, Trump is falling back on a similar play he used at the end of July and again in September, when he was trailing Biden significantly in the polls and looking for ways to jumpstart campaign.

In a news conference Friday afternoon announcing the rule, he said it would “transform the way the U.S. government pays for drugs to end global freeloading on the backs of American citizens and American patients.”

However, health industry and economic experts immediately criticized that the order will not have any useful immediate impact for consumers and could hurt our response to the pandemic.

CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization Michelle McMurry-Heath cautioned that the most favored nation proposal would “impose arbitrary foreign price controls on the very researchers trying to develop vaccines and treatments to end this public health crisis.”

Similarly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s chief policy officer Neil Bradley criticized how the most favored nation rule would “implement harmful price controls, which could jeopardize access to new life saving medicines at a time when we need them most and undermine the ability of our most innovative companies to produce the next breakthrough treatment or cure.”

One positive to note, which is supported by both Democrats and Republicans, is the new rebate rule which will require pharmacy benefit managers and health plans in Medicare Part D to pass along billions in savings in rebates directly to patients.

More broadly though, whether President Trump’s goal is to weaken the state of our nation for the incoming Biden administration so that he is in a better position to run again in 2024 or simply to just try to make his own administration appear better in comparison, it is clear Trump’s motivation is politics, not service to our country.

President Trump’s failures on the public health and economic crises continue to weaken the United States at a time when we next competent leadership most.