Making Medicare Drugs Affordable
The cost of prescription drugs has long been out of control in the United States, with the federal government being barred from using its buying power to negotiate down sticker prices. Now, thanks to a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have begun negotiating lower drug prices. But pharmaceutical companies are already fighting back, with numerous lawsuits, placements of op-eds, and support from conservative lawmakers.
Merith Basey, executive director of Patients For Affordable Drugs NOW spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on Rising Up With Sonali about the IRA’s impact on drug prices and how spurious the arguments against price controls are.
The views expressed here and on Rising Up With Sonali do not necessarily reflect the opinion of YES! Media.
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Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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