Hey, as long as weed stays the same price, I’ll somehow get through the next two years. But this is terrible news for a lot of vulnerable people.

From Reuters:

Novartis AG (NOVN.S) and Bayer AG (BAYGn.DE) are among nearly 30 drugmakers that have taken steps to raise the U.S. prices of their medicines in January, ending a self-declared halt to increases made by a pharma industry under pressure from the Trump administration, according to documents seen by Reuters. Other drugmakers set to raise prices at the start of 2019 include Allergan Plc (AGN.N), GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L), Amgen Inc (AMGN.O), AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L) and Biogen Inc (BIIB.O), the documents show. The hikes will pose a new challenge to President Donald Trump’s pledge to lower the costs of prescription medications in the world’s most expensive pharmaceutical market.

Gee, you mean you can’t just blow piffling insults out your sphincter and change the behavior of giant, greedy corporations?

I’d just assumed the reason drug prices were so much lower in every other industrialized country is they all had leaders who were constantly on Twitter trying to make fun of people.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed a slew of policies aimed at lowering prices and passing more of the discounts negotiated by health insurers on to patients. Those measures are not expected to provide relief to consumers in the short-term, however, and fall short of giving government health agencies direct authority to negotiate or regulate drug prices.

Or we could just have a universal health care system and pay less per capita for health care than we do now while getting better results. You know, like every other developed country in the world does.

Or how about we try the idiot-on-Twitter solution for a few more decades? See how that works out.

***

Yo! Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump by Aldous J. Pennyfarthing is now available at Amazon! Buy there (or at one of the other fine online retailers carrying it), or be square.

****

But wait, there’s more! The Fierce, Fabulous (and Mostly Fictional) Adventures of Mike Ponce, America’s First Gay Vice President is also available at Amazon! You can get two great political humor ebooks for less than the price of the coffee you’ll be spitting out on your tablet when you read them!