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What is Obama doing to rein in drug prices?

The AARP assessed annual retail prices between 2006 and 2013 for 622 widely used medications and found the average cost doubled during that time. By 2013 that average yearly cost was $11,000, about three-quarters of the average annual Social Security benefit.

This rising unaffordability of prescription drugs hits hardest at retirees, people using several medications, those requiring long-term meds and the growing number of consumers with high deductibles in their health insurance.

Drug costs now constitute the fastest-growing part of the U.S.'s health care budget. As a line item, they represent almost 20 percent of employers' health insurance benefit costs.

Between 2013 and 2015 one notorious pharma company, Valeant, increased the prices on 31 of its drug products between 91 percent and 2,288 percent. But outlier villains such as Valeant and Martin Shkreli aren't the main reason drug costs for most people are getting out of hand. John Rother, president of the nonpartisan research group, National Coalition on Health Care, told Real Clear Health that the biggest impact on rising drug costs comes "from traditional pharmaceutical companies raising prices on their products across the board."

A prime example of that was Pfizer, which started this year raising prices on more than 100 of its drugs, almost its entire portfolio, by an average 9.4 percent. Pfizer hiked prices on some of its drugs 20 percent.

Polls consistently show that the public places rising drug prices at or near the top of all the issues they want political candidates to rectify. Given this public clamor for controlling drug prices, it is only natural to ask what the current, change-you-can-believe-in president is doing about it?

The answer can be stated any of five ways: nada, zilch, gornig, rien, niente.

Obama's apologists give the excuse that a reactionary, recalcitrant, covertly racist Republican Congress prevents the president from doing anything about increasingly unaffordable drug prices. Such diversions, however, are the fiction of Obama's political lackeys and the media.

Although the characterization of Congressional Republicans by Obama's supporters is accurate, the fact remains that a president, especially a lame duck with nothing to lose, can do plenty to advance the cause of constraints on drug prices.

Here's an instructive example.

In 1961 the U.S. also had a Democratic president whose charm beguiled millions of people, even as he perpetuated the conservative domestic policies of a previous administration. John F. Kennedy disdained social welfare legislation because he did not want to incur a deficit. He ignored liberal economists that advocated programs for reducing unemployment. Even the columnist Walter Lippmann — accurately described as a "liberal of the Right" — in June of that year wrote that Kennedy's economic policy sought, "to carry on in all its essentials the Eisenhower economic philosophy…It's like the Eisenhower Administration 30 years younger."

But Kennedy's own economic conservatism was self-limiting. As part of that policy he was determined to control inflation. That led him to pressure the United Steelworkers Union into negotiating a noninflationary wage contract in the spring of 1962. Then ten days after Kennedy squeezed his supporters in organized labor, the chairman of US Steel, Roger Blough, raised the price of steel mill products by $6 a ton, to $176.

Kennedy responded furiously. He called an afternoon press conference where he told the nation: "The American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility to show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans."

Kennedy placed the greed of steel executives within the context of national challenges in Berlin and Vietnam that required a call-up of reservists and their deployment into life-threatening situations.

After the news conference Kennedy leaked a comment he purportedly made in private to one of his Massachusetts confreres: "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed him till now."

But the press conference was just talk to rally the public. He also took some hard-knuckle action. Although Kennedy lacked any statutory authority to curb the price increase, he immediately began to use the full arsenal available to a president.

First, his Defense Secretary, Robert MacNamara, announced that the Defense Department would only grant contracts to steel firms that did not raise prices.

Second, Kennedy prodded the Federal Trade Commission to investigate collusive price fixing in the steel industry.

Third, he told his Treasury Secretary, Douglas Dillon, and the IRS Commissioner, Mortimer Caplin, to launch a tax probe.

Fourth, Kennedy's brother, the Attorney-General, convened a grand jury to investigate the US Steel executives. Robert Kennedy later said, "I told the FBI to interview them all — march into their offices the next day."

Roger Blough caved and rescinded his price increase within 72 hours. But Kennedy, unlike Obama, was not inclined to easily kiss and make up with an adversary.

Two weeks later, United States Steel and the Bethlehem Steel Company were indicted on charges of violating federal antitrust laws.

Press secretary Pierre Salinger leaked a conversation in which Kennedy supposedly told an associate, "They kicked us right in the balls. Are we supposed to sit there and take a cold, deliberate f-----g?…They f----d us and now we've got to try to f--k them."

In a press conference following that victory, Kennedy was asked what he told Blough to scotch the price increase. Charming in victory, Kennedy paraphrased Ulysses Grant's remark to Robert E. Lee when taking the surrender at Appomattox Court House. Kennedy said he told Blough that his men could keep their horses for the spring planting.

Alas, that was Kennedy's one, brief, shining moment as a progressive, albeit in furtherance of the classic, conservative goal of controlling inflation. After that, he allowed initiatives on Medicare, civil rights and federal aid to education to languish until Lyndon Johnson became president and secured their passage.

But the fact that Kennedy was a Cold Warrior and a conservative is beside the point. It just so happened that he revealed the kind of tools a president has available, even if he used them because his ornery personal competitiveness and rich guy's sense of entitlement were challenged.

On various occasions during the past few years, Bernie Sanders has characterized Obama as weak, conservative and a disappointment. Sanders would now prefer to keep those comments under a bushel because he's trying to court the black vote. Nonetheless, Sanders' description is spot-on with respect to what Obama is doing to control drug prices.

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