Four Examiner pieces by Quin (links embedded in headlines);
Trump team hits home run by balking at its own drug price plan (July 11):
In deciding today not to change certain rules related to pharmaceutical pricing, the Trump administration deserves great credit for its willingness to reexamine its own assumptions.
Through the Department of Health and Human Services, the administration had been poised to issue a new rule upending a system of drug-price “rebates” (in effect, discounts) that are negotiated by middlemen companies known as “pharmacy benefit managers.” The administration wanted to make the change to this complicated system, at least within Medicare and Medicaid, because the current system leaves list prices high at the pharmacy counter for consumers buying the medicines without the benefit of insurance.
Nonetheless, the proposed change was ill-considered. … Rather than being bullheaded about their plan, administration officials were willing to examine counterarguments and counterevidence. They and the president deserve credit for abandoning their proposal….
Brit envoy is right: Trump’s diplomacy is awful (July 8):
My colleague Tom Rogan is right that the British government should recall its ambassador to the United States. But that doesn’t mean the ambassador’s leaked assessment of President Trump’s diplomacy was wrong.
In appropriately candid internal memos secured by the Daily Mail, Ambassador Kim Darroch described Trump as “inept,” “incompetent,” and “insecure.” He would also have been right to say that even to Trump’s own underlings, the president’s spasmodic diplomatic moods often must appear incomprehensible, injudicious, and irresponsible….
Yes, Perot made elderBush lose the 1992 election (July 10): Many of the statistical analyses of whether or not Ross Perot really was responsible for George H.W. Bush’s loss of the presidency ignore the timing of Perot’s moves into, out of, and back into the race…..
Big-spending Congress puts Federal Reserve in a bind (July 12): Complicated, somewhat contradictory economic signals in the past few days show that big-spending lawmakers are putting the Federal Reserve Board in an increasingly tough position. Unless President Trump and Congress suddenly demonstrate fiscal discipline, this autumn’s economy could be at least as unsteady as last fall’s was. ….
