By admin 
Seniors, be prepared: if Tom Kean Jr. is re-elected and gets his way, you will have to pay a lot more for your prescription medications or go without.
He’s Big Pharma’s man in Congress. Kean has received more than $1.1 million in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, an accusation his campaign has not refuted.
Why does Big Pharma love him? Opposed to the reform, President Biden signed a law allowing Medicare to negotiate discounts for seniors, a law that also limits their out-of-pocket spending to $2,000 per year starting in January. And it limited the cost of insulin to $35 per month.
Keep in mind that Kean’s opposition to negotiated discounts means that Big Pharma has been able to charge whatever it wants, driving up costs for both the government and seniors. The reform phases of negotiated rebates, starting with the most commonly used drugs.
AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins called it “a common-sense approach that people across the political spectrum support. In reality,” she added“the only opposition all these years came from big pharmaceutical companies.”
That, and Tom Kean Jr. He railed against that sensible law, repeating Big Pharma’s statement that allowing Medicare to negotiate is akin to “price controls” and would destroy 58,000 pharmaceutical jobs in New Jersey – a claim he has never provided a shred of evidence for, and won’t talk about now.
No wonder. The pharmaceutical industry titans who railed against the Price Negotiation Act are now assuring their shareholders that it is will have no meaningful impact their starting point, as The Hill reported.
Yet the Republican leadership that Kean voted for, and the people behind Project 2025, are calling for that law to be repealed if they regain power, which of course is what Big Pharma wants.
Kean would undoubtedly go along with that too: exposing millions of seniors to higher drug costs, higher out-of-pocket expenses and higher insulin costs.
“They could face out-of-pocket costs of more than $10,000 a year for some of the medications that Medicare covers,” Juliette Cubanski, a Medicare policy expert at KFF, warned last week. “Many seniors will not be able to afford their medications at all, because most live on a relatively low income.”
And it’s not just your grandma who pays too much. If Medicare is no longer able to negotiate, the government would have to pay an additional $200 billion over 10 years, KFF estimates. That’s a lot of money. From a perspective, restoring most of the state and local tax deduction known as SALT would be enough. Or to expand Medicare coverage to include hearing and dental care. Kean wants to give that money to Big Pharma instead.
He argues that Medicare must pay too much so these companies can fund research into new drugs, and that negotiating the high prices would doom us all. “We are now in COVID, voting for the destruction of the pharmaceutical industry would be the same as in World War II, voting for the destruction of the tank factory,” he stated during a 2020 debate.
That’s Big Pharma’s line anyway. But the truth is that most of the basic drug research is funded by the federal government, with grants to universities and other research centers. In 2018, small companies, largely funded by government and charities, accounted for nearly two-thirds of new drugs patented in the U.S. and nearly three-quarters of drugs in late-stage development. Harvard Business Review.
That’s where the technology underlying the life-saving Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for COVID came from. And let’s not forget: When House Republicans tried to cut billions from the government budget for this kind of medical research, Kean immediately agreed. without a beep. What would then happen to the Kean tank factory?
And let’s be honest: Big Pharma doesn’t spend all its revenue on research. It pays its top executives extravagantly, with Johnson & Johnson CEO Joaquin Duato more than 28 million dollars last year. It spends tens of billions annually on marketing more than 150 million dollars per year about lobbying and political contributions.
Every other developed country negotiates for lower prices and pays less than us for the same drugs. What pharmaceutical companies then do is pass on the extra costs to Americans. Why should we have to bear that burden?
“This is all nonsense,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-6th, the lead author of the provision to negotiate drug prices. “It’s just Tom Kean going along with what the Republican leadership wants.”
He will undoubtedly do the same if they try to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, says Pallone, also one of the law’s chief architects. House Republicans have pledged to get rid of any subsidies that make coverage affordable, which must be reauthorized next year. Millions could lose their health care altogether.
Even as a state lawmaker, Kean’s record is revealing: He voted against three bills passed by our state to strengthen protections in the Affordable Care Act that ultimately provided big savings to consumers. Thanks to these bills he opposed, health insurance premiums in New Jersey’s individual market actually fell by 9 percent in 2019.
So whatever he claims, Kean is not cutting back on medicine or healthcare. If you want to make both more affordable, vote for his opponent, Sue Altman.
As a senator, Kean even voted against putting $11 million into a state-funded program that helps seniors pay for their prescription medications. And like Donald TrumpWhen given the opportunity to actually support the idea of lowering drug prices, Kean refused to do so – instead leading the charge against the reform. So don’t be misled. He will put his Pharma backers first.
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