Kevin Drum highlights the completely ignorant policy-influencing of Elon Musk, noting that part of the continuing resolution that Musk worked so hard to kill included reforms to Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), who effectively serve as middle-men skimming dollars from patients trying to access their prescriptions. The CR included bipartisan language that would reign in this kind of consumer fraud, which Elon was on X last week being typically ignorantly angry about. You know what happens next:
Unfortunately, the bill failed to pass. You, Elon, should know this since you were the one who killed it. It was part of last month’s Continuing Resolution that you mounted a jihad against, demanding that the CR should maintain current funding and absolutely nothing else.¹ This meant ditching PBM reform because it was 500 pages long and you insisted that page count was the proper metric for judging the bill.
So PBM reform died. And now you’re telling us you never even knew what it was?
¹Except for hurricane relief, farm subsidies, the Key bridge, Virginia class subs, and pediatric cancer research.
This is one of the things that really gets my blood boiling when it comes to policy making. Writing policy is hard, complicated work, because the real world is a messy, complicated place. That the PBM bill was 500 pages long likely had little to do with pork barrel spending and more to do with the inane complexity of our health care system and all the tiny loopholes profiteers have found to bilk patients of their dollars. But, for decades now, the GOP has insisted that policies should be simple, two- or three-page affairs, and judged the efficacy of bills on that completely asinine metric. Further, they have thrown their support fully behind ignorant blowhards like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who run off at the mouth about whatever has infected their brain this week, making real world demands that effect people’s lives and then only realizing after the fact the consequences of their words (as if no one was standing out here trying to warn everyone otherwise.) It’s infuriating. Politics is broken in a lot of ways. This is one of the dumbest. Policy making is hard. It requires thoughtfulness and a measured seriousness. Something Elon and Trump clearly lack. It’s going to be a long four years with these guys in charge.
Justin DaMetz 