Chart of the Day: The Trump Plan for Prescription Drugs

After griping for hours about President Trump’s upcoming speech on reducing prescription drug prices, you’d think I’d at least listen to the damn thing and then comment on it, wouldn’t you? I guess so. That would be the fair thing to do.

But here’s the thing: Sometimes I get tired of being sucked into long, dry analyses of Republican plans that we all know perfectly well are meaningless. Someone has to do it, and very often that someone is me. It’s my role in the vast politico-industrial complex, after all. But seriously, who cares? Trump himself barely understood what he was reading, and whatever it was, Congress is going to ignore it. Plus it’s Friday, and I’m tired. So fuck it.

Besides, there’s really no need for all that work. There are hundreds of analysts out there who know more than me about this stuff, and they render instant decisions on it via the stock market. So if all you want to know is whether Trump’s plan is good for consumers or good for pharmaceutical companies, just check out how pharmaceutical stocks did as Trump was delivering his speech. If stocks went down, that’s good news for consumers. If stocks went up, it’s good news for drug companies.

Can you guess which way pharmaceutical stocks went? Huh? Can you?

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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