Michael Hiltzik: Merck says it's being 'coerced' into negotiating its drug prices with Medicare. That's nonsense
No one really expected the pharmaceutical industry to lie down and take it when Congress authorized Medicare to start negotiating prices of the prescription drugs it buys for enrollees.
By that standard, the federal lawsuit filed June 6 by the big drug manufacturer Merck falls into the "dog bites man" category of non-news.
So, too, does a nearly identical lawsuit filed June 9 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And also the threats by other drug companies to file their own lawsuits.
That doesn't mean the cases aren't worth examining. They're windows into the mind of Big Pharma, revealing the industry's grotesque level of entitlement and its cynical exploitation of Americans' desire for better healthcare in order to claim profits well beyond the level that any thinking person would consider moral.
The lawsuits are so similar they read like ChatGPT versions of each other. Both are compendiums of artful dodging and febrile rhetoric, which is what corporate lawyers produce for a
