Cory Booker is the first-term African-American Senator from New Jersey. He is always the fair-haired boy and often touted as a rising progressive star. A rising star, yes. A progressive, no. I just learned he joined Republicans last January to block the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada.
Some background: In every developed country but the U.S., the government negotiates the price at which companies can sell their drugs. But not here. In this country, drug companies are not limited in how much they can charge for their products. That’s how we get the $608 EpiPen. In one of the most extreme situations, the Mylan Pharmaceutical company raised the price of EpiPen, the life-saving device for severe allergies, from $108 to $608 overnight. The device can be bought in Canada for $125.
Back in 2003, Congress passed Medicare Part D, known as the Medicare Modernization Act. It was supposed to be a prescription drug benefit program for seniors; however, it was really protection for pharmaceutical companies. This bill specifically barred the federal government from negotiating lower prices for medicines as is done in other industrialized countries.
Over the last 14 years, many bills have been introduced to enable the federal government to use its great purchasing power to get better deals—but they have all failed to pass. The latest effort is that of Bernie Sanders, who last January introduced a bill to have the federal government buy pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, where they are cheaper than in the United States. But this effort also failed with help from Cory Booker.
Booker’s price for such a terrible vote appears to be $267,000 from pharmaceutical companies to his campaign chest. Over the last six years, he has received more campaign contributions from these companies than any other Democratic Senator.
Cory Booker is not a progressive.