[eykanal]

So playing "skeptic in a vacuum" for a minute—i.e., pretending that I don't know anything about this administration, and not having done any research beyond reading the linked article—this seems like a pretty good thing. Insurance companies negotiate tremendous discounts for pharmaceuticals, which means that people without insurance are often majorly screwed when trying to buy medicine. Having the government act as a negotiator with the drug companies to obtain similar discounts for the uninsured seems to be a positive move.

Happy to have someone explain to me why this is a bad take.

[ceejayoz]

That's not actually what's happening here.

They're the same self-pay deals the companies offer to the public already.

Wejovy, for example: https://www.novocare.com/content/dam/novonordisk/novocare/re...

(Or you can go through a compounding pharmacy for even cheaper. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hims-hers-launch-of-compou...)

[happytoexplain]

Assuming there's nothing wrong with it technically (scam, misleading, mishandling, whatever), then yeah, nothing wrong your take. It's just the obvious meta-problems: His name being on it creates trust issues and reluctance (and inversely: blind trust on the other side). Even just regarding image and principles: Most people justifiably hate the idea of a prideful asshole putting his name front and center on a government service - they want the comport of a president to be the opposite of a cartoonish car salesman. They might tolerate it if the guy in question doesn't cultivate that image (e.g. Obamacare), but even then, they don't want the guy to officially name it that (e.g. ACA) because that would again contribute to the image of petty self-advertisement. Of course this "normal" human psychology gets short-circuited with enough hate ("I don't like that behavior. Oh wait, my enemies also don't like? Now I like it.").

[montroser]

Obamacare was dubbed as such by Republicans, not by Obama himself. The R's meant for it to be derogatory.

[stvltvs]

A step closer to Medicare for all?

[montroser]

Can't tell if this is serious or a joke? This site he launched is literally like Groupon for drugs, for people who don't have health insurance. It's mostly nothing, but if anything it is a step toward normalizing not having health insurance.