The pharmaceutical company known as Merck has filed a lawsuit
against the federal government following the passage of
the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that would allow for
Medicare to negotiate drug prices on a select few drugs beginning in 2026.
Now, this doesn't mean that Medicare will be able to
negotiate the price of all drugs.
It doesn't mean that they would be able to negotiate the price of a handful of drugs
tomorrow.
Just means that up to ten drugs will be negotiated
on by Medicare beginning in 2026.
Merck ain't having it.
They ain't having it.
So they're trying to sue the federal government to put a stop to it.
And so they're arguing that their constitutional rights are being violated.
Let's try to understand their argument here.
They say the program would coerce Merck to provide its products at government set
prices, violating a clause of the Fifth Amendment that prohibits the government
from taking private property for public use without just compensation.
They also claim that the program would violate Merck's free speech rights by
coercing the company to sign an agreement it did not agree with
upon the conclusion of the negotiation.
Just to give you a little sense of how well Merck is doing financially.
Merck, which generated $14.5 billion in profit last year,
not just revenue, 14.5 billion with a B in profit last year,
claimed in a statement on Tuesday that the law would stifle the ability of it and
its peers to make risky investments in new cures.
What say you?
Are you concerned about this?
>> Okay, I am actually concerned about it.
And not from Merck's perspective, the opposite perspective.
Guys, this is as big a blow against capitalism as you could possibly imagine.
So not in the left-wing direction, but in an authoritarian direction,
in an insane, complete and utter corporate rule direction.
I don't know that anybody on the left or the right would be in favor of this.
This is a frontal attack on capitalism.
So let me explain why, Merck is saying, now,
normally you negotiate price on anything.
Whether it's a car, you buying something, the government buying something.
Capitalism 101 is we negotiate prices and
then we come to an agreement or we don't, and we move on.
So here they're saying no, under the current law,
which is already insane and already a giant affront to free markets,
the government's not allowed to negotiate drug price.
Never seen anywhere before, and to my knowledge anywhere,
it's insanity, where a company says, I will charge you X, and
you have no choice in the matter, you must pay me.
That's insane.
Or that's the current state of affairs brought to you by George W Bush,
Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
They all agreed to it.
They're all intensely corrupt, if you ask me.
Okay, so now Merck says, you want to negotiate drug prices.
That's against my rights.
My right is to charge you whatever I want,
and you shut your mouth, and you're not allowed to complain about it.
That's not how free markets work.
And he's like, we're being coerced.
No, you're not.
If the government gives you a price that's too low, then you just reject it.
Hey, if something costs you $10, you don't have to sell it for $9.
You could just wait and see if you can sell for $11 or
$20 or don't sell it at all.
Nothing is being coarse at all.
This is one of the most outrageous lies I have ever seen go to court.
>> Right, so you already described and
summarized what most legal experts are arguing.
Legal experts are saying, there's really no case here, and
essentially pointing to these constitutional protections as
the defense against this provision is weak, to say the least.
The argument here is, look, when it comes to negotiation,
there are two parties engaged in that negotiation.
Merck does not have to necessarily agree on the price that the Medicare program is
pushing for through these negotiations.
It's a back and forth.
But, look, the fact of the matter is, they don't want Medicare or
anyone, any health care insurer, any health coverage plan to have
the ability to negotiate the drug prices and get those prices down.
They want to be the ones who set the prices.
Anything goes, and no one has any leverage in this incredibly broken system.
That's part of the reason why here in the United States, even though
the National Institutes of Health spend a ton of money on research and development,
that's our taxpayer money.
They funnel it to the pharmaceutical companies in order to encourage them
through the research and development that we're funding to develop new drugs.
And they're turning around, and they're saying,
we're taking all the risk and you don't want us to make a profit.
You're setting prices.
Everything they're saying here is a lie.
And it would be true that they're taking all the risk if us,
the taxpayers, weren't at least partially funding their research and development.
Now, with that said.
>> No, I just want to say about the risk point, I want to come back to the freedom
of speech point in a second, too, but on risk, okay, then don't take it.
You're making 14 and a half billion dollars in profits, and you're telling me
there isn't enough money for you to take a risk to develop new drugs.
100% lie.
Because, guys, it's the old Warren Buffett line.
Warren Buffett, when talking about higher taxes,
he actually was in favor of higher taxes, and right-wing argument was, well,
if you make taxes higher, no one will invest.
Warren Buffett's was like, what real investor says,
I'm going to have to pay a little bit more in taxes from the extra money I make.
So I'm not going to do it.
I'm going to go home.
That's not a thing.
Investors invest because that's how they make money.
And drug companies make drugs that they sell at a tremendous profit.
Will they're going to turn down that profit?
>> Scared money don't make money.
>> No, I don't want to take any risks.
I don't want to take any risks, so I'm not going to make any profit,
said no capitalist ever.
Totally absurd.
>> Alright, now, you're already animated, but get a load of how CNBC covered this,
because during one of their well known shows, Squawk Box,
one of the hosts really felt the need to squawk quite a bit about this.
Let's watch.
>> I can understand both sides on this.
And that question, it's a political issue, it's an emotional issue.
We want these companies to spend to develop these therapies and
they're the best in the world.
And coming out of COVID, we're all thankful for
the money Pharma has invested in their businesses.
When the government says not only in addition to these laws and pricing and
how they're going to negotiate that, you have to agree that these rules are fair.
And this is where they're contesting this on a First Amendment right.
Like you're asking the drug companies to say, this is great,
we think this is totally fair.
We have no right to profitability.
That's where this seems kind of absurd and
where I think they have a lot of room to push back.
>> Framing this as the federal government claiming that pharmaceutical companies
have no right to profitability, that the federal government wants to stand in
the way of profitability is laughable to say the least.
And remember what the first iteration of
that provision was before Congress chopped it down to the.
Look, it's better than nothing, but if you look at the first iteration,
the end result was pathetic to say the least.
The first iteration allowed for, the whole point was to allow for
Medicare to negotiate all drugs as they should be allowed to do.
But they whittled it down to ten drugs that can be negotiated and
that will go into effect in 2026.
>> No, it's a joke man.
It's like 0.1% of the drugs, Biden and
the corporate media are a bunch of clown liars pretending that they actually did
something big here when they're actually protecting 99.9% of drugs and drug makers.
But even that's not enough for Merck and even that's not enough for CNBC.
Understand, these guys are not at all capitalists.
They're corporatists.
And corporatists hate free markets.
They want the corporations big business to run everything and to have a monopoly and
to set up absurdities like this where they capture the government to do crony
capitalism and then the government turns around and says you have to pay.
The American taxpayer has to pay whatever they charge.
It's unheard of in capitalism.
It's total mental ideology.
Meanwhile, CNBC, they're making drug companies go into the free market.
Did you see their graphic, tantamount to extortion, but wait a minute.
Saying you can charge anything you want and the taxpayer has to pay for it?
That's extortion.
That's like literally the definition of extortion.
>> Absolutely.
>> Look, CNBC is pure, unfiltered corporate propaganda.
It's like the Meth.
It's like Walter White's Meth of corporate propaganda.
And they mainline it.
They're like, you see,
the government is saying that Merck has to agree that this is fair.
No, the government didn't say that.
The government just said we're going to negotiate prices and
wherever we come out will, I guess, be the fair market price.
That's an ad violation of our freedom of speech.
Then every market transaction is a violation of your freedom of speech.
Beyond mental.
I'm telling you, this is hilarious because if the Supreme Court says yes to this,
it would, ironically, totally destroy capitalism.
>> So I wanted to just quickly provide some receipts in regard to what types of
government subsidies and government grants Merck specifically has received.
So most of this funding and most of these subsidies were obtained beginning in 2012.
So there's the good jobs first subsidy tracker.
And you can go to that website to see just what kind of subsidies and
grants these various companies get.
This is for Merck, right?
So apparently they get the bulk of their subsidies from state and
local governments.
And look at that amount.
Since 2012, they've received 77 different awards from state and
local governments to the tune of $142.9 million.
>> Why, they made 14 and a half billion in profit.
Why do we have to give them our money?
>> Guys, the reason why I share that with you is because every time they whine
about how they take all the risks, understand that they are lying.
The government, whether it's the federal government or
whether it's state or local governments, will funnel taxpayer money or
provide subsidies for these pharmaceutical companies for a variety of reasons.
But certainly when it comes to research and development,
the federal government gets real active.
I mean, look at how much the federal government spent on basically providing
research and development money for pharmaceutical companies for
the COVID vaccine.
Because honestly, if you really leave it to the free market jenk,
let's also keep this real.
They're not willing to take the risk on their own.
>> No, they aren't.
>> The investors without the government helping them.
>> No, they have the government.
So they're like, why don't we just make them give us $140,000,000 since we already
bought all these guys?
Because Anna, so if you're talking about drugs on the edges where you're not
positive that it's going to work and it's sudden, you're not sure
you could turn a profit on it, they're not going to develop those anyway.
But the core of their business is to make very profitable drugs that we can't
do without.
They are going to do that no matter what.
Otherwise they're out of business.
To say, my God, I was going to make 14 and a half billion dollars in profit,
because you hurt my feelings I'm not going,
because you didn't give me a government subsidy I'm not going to, is not a thing,
no capitalist that's worth their salt would ever say that, it's absurd.
Look, and guys, for, like, the tiny sliver of experimental drugs that
maybe that they would decide not to risk their capital on and
just instead take it home and hoard it, et cetera, for those tiny amount,
you think it's worth it that we all overpay by trillions of dollars?
No, it's a sham.
It's a total unearthed lie.
Understand, there's three parts of America, okay?
Three branches politically.
There's the left-wing, there's the right-wing, and there's a corporate wing.
Now, the corporate wing is tiny.
It's like one percent of Americans.
>> American voters.
But unfortunately, they control almost all of the power.
That is about 90% of the Democratic and Republican parties combined.
That's the uni party that everybody talks about.
That is a corporate wing.
They're all lying to you.
The Republicans are lying to you that they're right-wing.
The Democrats are lying to you that they're left-wing.
They only serve their corporate donors, and
we've proved it a hundred times in every instance when it comes to legislation.
But the key is corporate media.
They're the ones that do the marketing for all the other corporate machines and
they go, my God, if they cannot charge anything they want to you and
make you pay the gigantic price of drugs and
subsidize it with your taxpayer money, that is extortion on poor Merck.
What are you doing to their First Amendment rights?
So if you're a right-winger, you should despise what Merck is doing and
what all those greasy, awful politicians on the Republican and
Democratic side do for 99.9% of drugs.
So all of this is disgusting.
And finally, that corporate media marketing was just,
chef's kiss, perfect on that clip that you found, Anna,
because the guy says, we have to be thankful to Pharma.
Because without, I mean, they did it out of the goodness of their heart.
The 14 and a half billion dollars every single year in profit.
And I said, at least the last year, that level of profit,
that was just a coincidence.
That was just a side.
They don't care about that at all.
They were doing it to help us.
But now what have you done to Merck?
CNBC is the biggest pile of trash I have ever seen in any form of media.