When lying about George Bush's very successful Medicare Part D drug program, the constant refrain of the looney left as it tries to repeal Part D is that no negotiating takes place in the program. There is negotiation; it is just that thankfully the totally inept United States government is not involved.
Of course, that is just another left-wing canard (like the unfunded claim). Just because there is no negotiation with the government (the guys that negotiated thousand-dollar toilet seats and the billion-dollar healthcare.gov web site) does not mean there is no negotiation. It is the negotiation among CVS and Aetna and Astra/Rite-Aid and AARP and Bayer/Walmart and BC and J&J (add in the PBMs and rotate all the players around the way a market works) that has brought the Medicare Part D program in so far under budget1 projections. The case study for the way government negotiation works with drugs is the VA; ask vets why they all also sign up for Part D.
As for the non-negotiation-with-the-government thing, that was a fact of life from the time of President Clinton's proposal for a Medicare drug plan two to three years earlier. Nothing was ever going to happen if that was part of the bill--which was probably why there was not much debate on the subject in 2003.
1There really is no budget as is the case for all of Medicare
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