Price controls didn’t work when Richard Nixon enacted them in the 1970s, and they won’t work now that Joe Biden is implementing them on a list of pharmaceuticals.

Earlier this week, the Biden administration announced what it euphemistically called “price negotiations” on 10 drugs — the first round of more to come. In reality, they’re price controls, and they’re based on his laughably named Inflation Reduction Act, which he now admits, “I wish I hadn’t called it that.” The law empowered Medicare to, for the first time, directly engage in such negotiations with drug manufacturers, and new prices will go into effect in 2026.

“This is just going to put more money back in the pockets of millions of Americans,” Biden said. “This plan is a key part of Bidenomics.”

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra added, “We have never been closer than we are right now to everyone having access to healthcare that they need and that they can afford.”

Given the government’s poor track record over the last 60 years, nothing should scare anyone more than a Democrat promising “affordable healthcare.” That’s doubly so for Biden’s drug cartel.

CNBC reports: “Here are the 10 drugs subject to the initial talks this year:”

• Eliquis, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, is used to prevent blood clotting, to reduce the risk of stroke.
  
• Jardiance, made by Boehringer Ingelheim, is used to lower blood sugar for people with Type 2 diabetes.
  
• Xarelto, made by Johnson & Johnson, is used to prevent blood clotting, to reduce the risk of stroke.
  
• Januvia, made by Merck, is used to lower blood sugar for people with Type 2 diabetes.
  
• Farxiga, made by AstraZeneca, is used to treat Type 2 diabetes.
  
• Entresto, made by Novartis, is used to treat certain types of heart failure.
  
• Enbrel, made by Amgen, is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
  
• Imbruvica, made by AbbVie, is used to treat different types of blood cancers.
  
• Stelara, made by Janssen, is used to treat Crohn’s disease.
  
• Fiasp and NovoLog, insulins made by Novo Nordisk.

Several companies are suing to stop the negotiations, arguing that forcing major discounts will undermine the market. The companies also allege multiple constitutional violations. The Fifth Amendment says, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The Eighth Amendment prohibits “excessive fines,” which would be imposed if drug makers balk at “negotiations.” Finally, the companies say coercing them into agreement violates their free speech rights under the First Amendment. They promise to fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

Biden is banking on a few things working in his favor.

First of all, few Americans have much sympathy for Big Pharma. How many movies and TV shows over the years have made villains of pharmaceutical companies? Heck, we could argue that the coronavirus pandemic was a little too close to the plot of “Mission Impossible II” for comfort. Step 1: Drug company manufactures virus. Step 2. It also produces the only vaccine. Step 3: Profit.

Are these companies the villains because Hollywood always vilifies (other) capitalists? Or is it because doing so resonates with Americans who generally feel like they’re being totally fleeced for healthcare?

To that point, some of the prices for drugs are utterly mind-blowing, and insurance (which is astronomically pricey enough) doesn’t always help much. In fact, many patients don’t get the treatment they need effectively because some actuary at the insurance company decided as much.

Medicare is bankrupt and will be totally insolvent in a few short years. Profligate government spending and out-of-control costs for drugs and treatments for a longer-living population will do that. So it seems reasonable that something should be done to control those costs.

Medicare recipients are often on a fixed income, and many of them will look as favorably on Biden’s drug dealing as student borrowers do on his “forgiveness” scam.

Then again, according to The Wall Street Journal, “Total U.S. out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs in nominal dollars is lower than it was in 2003 and accounted for only 1% of the $4.25 trillion the U.S. spent on healthcare in 2021.”

Moreover, Biden is the titular head of the “get your laws off my body” party, but here he is getting between you and the drugs you take.

He’s also the one who mandated COVID vaccines, which oh by the way created massive profits for a few pharmaceutical giants.

Charitably put, the free market allows people who want to help people to earn a profit while doing so. To play on those words, however, the free market isn’t charity. Companies that produce life-improving or -saving drugs ought to reap a reward for all the research and development put into them. For every one drug that goes to market, many don’t, which is a cost of doing business that must be covered by profits on the one that did.

In this case, reducing profits for drugs sold to Medicare recipients means the rest of us will pay more for insurance and drugs to subsidize the loss. It will also mean fewer drugs make it to market. Lives will be made worse or lost.

The fundamental question is this: Why is Joe Biden the one who gets to decide how much companies should be paid? Who does he think he is, Bernie Sanders? Or Walter White?

It’s notable that many drug deals on the street involve guns (and, we might add, deadly violence among Democrat constituents). Well, Biden is going to be “negotiating” drug prices at the virtual point of a gun. “If a drugmaker declines to negotiate,” CNBC notes, “it must either pay an excise tax of up to 95% of its medication’s U.S. sales or pull all of its products from the Medicare and Medicaid markets. The pharmaceutical industry contends that the penalty can be as high as 1,900% of a drug’s daily revenues.”

That’s not negotiation but cartel extortion, which the influence-peddling Joe Biden and his drug-addict son Hunter have apparently perfected.