Corporate Dems are trying to prevent the government from securing lower prices for drugs that the government already funded.

Last week, we learned that Merck is planning to charge Americans 40 times its cost for a COVID drug whose development was subsidized by the American government. The situation spotlights two sets of facts that have also gone largely unmentioned in the legislative debate over whether to let Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices.

Fact one: Americans are facing not merely expensive drugs, but prices that are examples of outright profiteering.

Fact two: In many cases, the medicines we are being gouged on are those that we the public already paid for.

These facts show us that pharma-bankrolled Democrats trying to kill drug pricing measures aren’t just bought and paid for in this particular skirmish — they are foot soldiers in the pharmaceutical industry’s larger multi-decade campaign to seal off and rig America’s alleged “free market.”