See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet State Rep. Angie Nixon, the Democratic Party nominee for the United States Senate from Florida. Some of you may not know of her, but she has made a splash in the Sunshine State. For example, in her own words:

Subscribe now

“There is no sexualization at a drag show. It’s just people dressing up and singing and performing. I have taken my children to drag shows. And it’s fun. It’s entertainment. It is wholesome entertainment.”

If everyone in Florida who agrees that drag shows are appropriate for children votes for her, Rep. Nixon could get 10 to 20% of the vote in the general election. She is up against Sen. Ashley Moody. Moody was elected Attorney General of Florida by a bigger majority than Gov. Ron Desantis. She was then picked by the governor to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio when he became Secretary of State.

I am not often as surprised as I was this week by Nixon’s stunning victory in the Democratic U.S. Senate Primary.

Every account I had seen indicated that retired Air Force Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who lied about President Donald Trump and a call with Ukraine President Volodimir Zelensky, was going to win handily and without much opposition.

Vindman had statewide name identification because of his role in trying to impeach President Trump. Florida is the third biggest state in the country, and it was hard to see how anyone else could get enough name recognition to be competitive without spending a huge amount of money on advertising.

Nixon came from Jacksonville in the northern part of the state. Vindman was outspending her $9 million to $700,000 (almost 12:1).

However, she won by almost 12 points when the votes were counted.

What makes this intriguing is that Nixon is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. In a relatively conservative state, Nixon supports a range of radical policies. She wants to abolish ICE, cut off US aid to Israel, and establish a national health system by putting everyone into Medicare.

Nixon’s political cheering section illustrates just how radical she is. Nixon was backed by “the“Squad,” Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, former Rep. Cori Bush, and children’s YouTube personality Ms. Rachel.

Give a gift subscription

There is no real danger of Nixon winning the Senate seat. Florida has become the most reliable large Republican state.

But from the Democrats’ perspective there is a real danger that Nixon will further isolate and shrink the party in Florida — and become one more national symbol of the rise of the true big government socialists who are taking control of the Democratic Party.

What started a few months ago as an uprising in New York City has now spread to Washington state, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and now Florida. Big government socialists and candidates who advocate unpopular values are winning in Democratic primaries all over the place.

The next stage will be seeing if they can reach beyond their passionate and energized base. Will they find the arguments and the strategies which enable them to attract people who are frustrated, angry, feel underserved or rejected, and are looking for a way to protest?

Nixon offered a good way to protest if you are a Democrat. She may not be an acceptable candidate for most Floridians. And that may be one more symptom of the problems Democrats are going to have this fall, when they get beyond the primaries and into the general election.

This was a pretty big shock.

Refer a friend

How to Win 2026

The 2026 midterms could be a defining moment for America. Follow Newt Gingrich and Gingrich 360’s latest columns and analysis on the ideas, policies, and strategies Republicans need to win the big arguments, grow the American majority, and deliver real results for the American people.

Republican Opportunity

Latest from America’s New Majority Project

America's New Majority Project

Americans Aren't Becoming Socialists

Read more

a month ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · America's New Majority Project

Latest from Newt’s World

Listen to more at NewtsWorld.com

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.

The principle behind hospital transparency is simple: Patients should know the price of care before they receive it. Americans should not have to agree to a medical procedure or test without knowing whether it will cost $5,000 or $50,000. Transparency creates the foundation for competition. If patients can compare prices, hospitals have a greater incentive to compete on cost and quality of care.

Subscribe now

Voters agree; polling from America’s New Majority Project found 72.8% support “requiring hospitals to publicly post their prices for treatment and services, including negotiating rates with insurers, so patients and purchasers can better understand hospital pricing.”

Unfortunately, hospitals have not always embraced this principle.

A 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services initiated 1,287 enforcement actions against hospitals for price transparency violations between 2021 and 2023. Of those, 851 came in 2023 alone. CMS issued more than $4 million in penalties to 14 hospitals that failed to take timely corrective action.

The Trump administration is now making enforcement a priority.

In February 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to strengthen enforcement of hospital and health plan transparency requirements. The order requires hospitals to publish a list of hundreds of shoppable services and procedures in a way that is easy for patients to understand, or to provide a price estimator tool. Hospitals can be fined $5,500 per day, up to $2 million annually, for noncompliance.

Casey Mulligan, chief economist and chief regulatory officer of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, said in a panel discussion at the HFMA 2026 Conference in June that the administration will focus on price transparency.

In June 2026, the administration also sent a letter warning more than 500 hospitals that they were failing to meet federal price transparency requirements.

Patients have a right to know the cost of their care upfront. Enhancing the enforcement of transparency rules is a crucial move forward. Ultimately, price transparency isn’t merely about following rules — it’s about prioritizing patients.

Refer a friend

Putting Patients Back in Charge of American Healthcare

Price transparency is essential for a patient-first healthcare approach.

How to Win 2026

If Republicans decisively win these four arguments, 2026 will be one of the most historic elections in our 250-year history.

Newt dismissed the significance of current polling and said Republicans should trust voters to make the right decision when presented with a clear contrast. He argued that Democrats have embraced left-wing candidates and socialist policies that are far outside the American mainstream.

Subscribe now

Rather than simply telling voters what Democrats believe, Newt said Republicans should show them. He suggested campaign advertising should rely heavily on Democrats’ own video and statements, allowing Americans to judge their positions for themselves. The strategy, he argued, would make it harder for Democratic candidates to distance themselves from unpopular positions as Election Day approaches.

Newt also said Republicans must aggressively communicate the results of President Donald Trump’s agenda, particularly on affordability. He pointed to lower prescription drug prices and argued that the broader Trump program has improved Americans’ quality of life while lowering costs. Republicans cannot expect traditional media outlets to make that case for them, he said.

Newt’s message was straightforward: Show Americans what Democrats are saying, present the facts about Republican results, and trust voters to decide. If Republicans win those two arguments, he predicted they could win a “huge election” this fall.

Refer a friend

How to Win 2026

The 2026 midterms could be a defining moment for America. Follow Newt Gingrich and Gingrich 360’s latest columns and analysis on the ideas, policies, and strategies Republicans need to win the big arguments, grow the American majority, and deliver real results for the American people.

Republican Opportunity

Listen to the latest on Newt’s World:

Speaker Mike Johnson has come up with exactly the right theme for the 2026 election. If you go to his team’s Contrast for America website you will see the framework he is establishing for House Republicans to keep and increase their majority in the House.

Subscribe now

Contrast for America shows just how radical big government socialism has become — and just how out of touch with normal Americans the core of the Democratic Party has become. On every issue, from raising taxes (virtually every Democrat in the House and Senate voted to raise taxes), to trying to destroy immigration enforcement, to defending men in women’s sports and in locker rooms, and to defending the schools’ efforts to control children without consulting parents. Repeatedly, the Democrats have moved into positions which only 10 percent to 15 percent of Americans support.

For someone who had no plans to be Speaker, Johnson has done an amazing job of learning the job in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. He only has a one- or two-vote margin at any given time. This means almost any member of the House Republican Conference can become vitally important on any issue for any reason.

Having been Speaker for four years with a much bigger majority, I am amazed at the calm patience with which Speaker Johnson manages the House, sustains the Republican majority, and gets the job done.

When he is not in Washington trying to get things passed, he is on the road raising money and campaigning for Republicans to keep the majority. He will be traveling across the country in August. By the end of the month, he will likely raise approximately $400 million. This will be a stunning achievement for a Speaker.

With all his legislative and fundraising focus, Speaker Johnson has also been able to think strategically and intuit the strongest possible strategy for House Republicans for the fall election.

Give a gift subscription

The great vulnerability for Democrats is how far they have gone to the left and how out of touch with the values of the American people they have become.

The Democrats would like to run a referendum on the current moment asking Americans, “is this good enough?” They might win that referendum given issues of affordability, the war with Iran, and the sense that the booming stock market does not necessarily reflect into a booming family budget for millions of Americans.

If the Democrats get the American people to focus narrowly on today — rather than the past damage President Joe Biden and the Democrats imposed on the country or the future damage the rising big government socialists will inflict — they might have a chance to win the House and Senate this fall.

However, as Speaker Johnson has intuited, if the question becomes “which party shares your values and can do a better job solving our problems?” the Democrats will collapse.

We run America’s New Majority Project, which has been looking for popular majority issues since 2018. On virtually every big question of values and of practical achievement, the Republicans represent 70 percent to 90 percent of the American people. The Democrats represent 15 percent to 20 percent.

You can go to Contrast for America to get the basic arguments you need to convince your friends and neighbors that we simply cannot allow the big government socialists to run the country.

The website starts with a bold proposition:

“THE 2026 MIDTERMS ARE A CONTRAST FOR AMERICA BETWEEN COMMON SENSE AND CRAZY.

“While Republicans deliver secure borders, a stronger economy, safer streets, and renewed American strength - Democrats are surrendering to the far left, communism, and much worse.

“From their dangerous policies to their radical candidates, we are giving voters a clear choice this election with one clear outcome: House Republicans must defend and grow our majority and continue saving America!”

Speaker Johnson has created a remarkably clear chart which we should make sure gets in the hands of every American before they vote:

If the election comes down to common sense Republicans versus crazy Democrats, Speaker Johnson will have a much bigger majority to work with next year — and in the process Majority Leader John Thune will have a much bigger margin in the Senate.

It is an exciting idea, and it may change history.

Refer a friend

How to Win 2026

The 2026 midterms could be a defining moment for America. Follow Newt Gingrich and Gingrich 360’s latest columns and analysis on the ideas, policies, and strategies Republicans need to win the big arguments, grow the American majority, and deliver real results for the American people.

Republican Opportunity

Latest from America’s New Majority Project

America's New Majority Project

Americans Aren't Becoming Socialists

Read more

a month ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · America's New Majority Project

Latest from Newt’s World

Listen to more at NewtsWorld.com

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.

Peggy Flanagan’s decisive victory in Minnesota’s Democratic Senate primary is the latest evidence that government-controlled healthcare is moving from the Democratic fringe toward the center of the party.

Subscribe now

Flanagan defeated establishment-backed Rep. Angie Craig while campaigning for a system that would ultimately replace most private and employer-sponsored insurance with a single federal plan. Her victory follows Abdul El-Sayed’s nomination for the U.S. Senate in Michigan and William Lawrence’s victory in a competitive Michigan House district. Both campaigned on the same basic approach. Other big government socialist candidates have carried it through Democratic primaries in New York and Colorado.

Their appealing slogan obscures the radical substance. This approach would concentrate control over coverage, prices, and medical payments with bureaucrats in Washington. Americans would lose plans they chose themselves or the ones they receive through their employers. Doctors and hospitals would become increasingly dependent on federally determined payment rates. New taxes would be required, and political officials and federal bureaucracies would gain enormous power over which treatments, technologies, and medicines the system could afford.

Republicans should offer the opposite future.

President Trump and congressional Republicans are working toward a healthcare system that transfers power away from government agencies, insurance companies and corporate middlemen — and toward individuals. That means clear prices before care, patient-owned and portable health records, greater freedom to choose doctors, simpler payments, stronger protection against fraud, and healthcare dollars that follow the individual instead of automatically flowing to insurance companies.

Most importantly, the Republican alternative should focus on helping Americans remain healthy for the long term. As Newt wrote in his latest book, “America’s Golden Age,” connected health information, wearable technology, earlier detection, prevention, and faster access to medical breakthroughs can save lives while reducing the enormous cost of treating diseases after they become severe.

The choice is becoming clear. Democrats are nominating candidates who would give Washington control of nearly every healthcare decision. Republicans should build a person-centered healthcare system in which Americans have the information, resources and freedom to make those decisions for themselves.

Refer a friend

Latest from America’s New Majority Project

America's New Majority Project

Beyond Who Pays: The Healthcare System Voters Actually Want

There’s a difference between agreeing with a reform and prioritizing it. The survey asked both, and the gap shows which ideas are ready to lead and which need to earn their place…

Read more

a month ago · 3 likes · 3 comments · America's New Majority Project

How to Win 2026

The 2026 midterms could be a defining moment for America. Follow Newt Gingrich and Gingrich 360’s latest columns and analysis on the ideas, policies, and strategies Republicans need to win the big arguments, grow the American majority, and deliver real results for the American people.

Republican Opportunity

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.

Last Friday and Saturday, Callista and I attended two fascinating events that turned out to have been responses to Nazi threats.

At a time when Vladimir Putin and his Russian dictatorship are threatening all of Western Europe, it was a sobering reminder that two generations ago Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came close to imposing their murderous regime on all of Europe.

Read more

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• “Mamdani Promised Affordability. His New Amazon Delivery Plan Could Make NYC More Expensive.” By Jarrett Stepman: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pushing a new Delivery Protection Act that would impose additional licensing, safety, training, and labor requirements on last-mile warehouses and delivery operations. While Mamdani argues the measure will protect workers and hold companies such as Amazon accountable, Stepman warns it could have the opposite effect. Amazon relies on more than 40 subcontractors employing roughly 5,000 workers to make deliveries across New York City, and the company says the legislation could threaten those jobs and force delivery operations outside the city. Small business owners who operate Amazon delivery partnerships have also warned that the proposal could put them out of business. Stepman argues that the predictable result will be longer delivery times, higher costs for consumers, and fewer opportunities for workers and small businesses. It is another example of how Mamdani’s big government socialist approach to “affordability” could ultimately make New York City more expensive.

Read more

Subscribe now

The conversation centered on Speaker Mike Johnson’s “Contrast for America” campaign, which draws inspiration from the Contract with America that helped Republicans win a historic majority in 1994. Newt said Republicans have an opportunity to achieve an even greater victory this November because Democrats have moved significantly further to the left.

Newt described today’s Democrats as “big government socialists” and pointed to recent Democratic primary results as evidence of the party’s transformation. He argued that this is not simply about individual candidates. Across the country, Democratic nominees are embracing policies and ideas that are increasingly disconnected from the values of most Americans.

For Republicans, Newt said the strategy should be straightforward: Make the choice clear and stick to it. Candidates should focus on the major contrasts between the two parties, including taxes, immigration, women’s sports and the consequences of socialism.

Newt also warned that Republicans should expect significant resistance from Democrats and the liberal media. Winning will require the courage and discipline to stay focused on the larger choice facing the country rather than allowing the campaign to become a collection of disconnected local races.

If Republicans campaign strategically as a team and consistently communicate these contrasts, Newt believes 2026 could become a historic election on a scale few currently expect.

Refer a friend

Listen to the latest on Newt’s World:

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Subscribe now

Newt said younger voters have increasingly embraced socialism after years of being taught that it is a positive alternative, while also confronting high housing costs, limited job opportunities and frustration with the economy. But he argued that big government socialism has consistently failed and that the “weird values” increasingly associated with the Democratic Party remain far outside the views of most Americans.

Looking toward November, Newt said Republicans should frame the election as a choice between two teams and ask Americans which team they trust to create a better future. But winning that argument will require Republicans to tell their own story more effectively. Newt pointed to tax relief, savings accounts for children and other policies Republicans have already enacted that directly affect American families.

He also emphasized that Republicans must keep working on affordability, particularly health care. Newt called health care the biggest single component of affordability and argued that greater transparency in health care costs and quality could dramatically reduce expenses for families.

Finally, Newt warned that control of Congress would determine whether President Donald Trump can continue advancing his agenda or face two years of obstruction and impeachment efforts. Calling 2026 “the most important off-year election in my lifetime,” Newt said Republicans must make the choice clear: One team wants to solve problems, while the other is focused on stopping President Trump.

Listen to the latest on Newt’s World:

As analysts look at the primary outcomes, polls, and supposedly expert commentators, they all seem to miss the biggest reality of the 2026 campaign.

Subscribe now

There are two teams running for control of the Congress.

One team, the Democrats, want to run individual races that become a referendum of whether affordability, the price of gasoline, the war in Iran, and the more aggressive aspects of immigration law enforcement are acceptable. Their goal is to turn legitimate discontent and inadequate performance into a repudiation of the current governing party.

Because so many of the Democratic candidates have said or posted on social media deeply unacceptable, alienating ideas and judgements, they want to practice the politics of amnesia. They would like to erase all references to everything they have said, wrote, or participated in before last week. They are desperately trying to reshape their image and their record into being normal.

Rep. Alexandra Ocassio-Cortez’s march to the middle is a classic example of this amnesia model. She is now rejecting the tone, stridency, and extremism that enabled her to emerge as a national figure.

Republicans have a simple but difficult assignment. They must function as a team and win arguments about affordability, health, and values of the future. They must make clear to the American people the gigantic difference between the America Republicans are working to create and the America the left would create.

The Democrats want a snapshot focused on this moment. They think if they can get a referendum on “is this good enough,” they have a chance to win.

If this is a campaign about which side will be better for America’s future, Republicans could win a stunning victory comparable to crushing George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis. It could be like the Contract with America campaign (which repudiated Democratic control of the House since 1928) and the rise of candidate Trump when all the elites were certain Hillary Clinton was unbeatable and an establishment figure like Gov. Jen Bush was going to be the nominee of the traditional Republican Party.

Give a gift subscription

Democrats will legitimately try to run individualistic campaigns. Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia will try to avoid any reference to his votes in Washington, the radical values of his major donors, or the nature of the team he joined in Washington.

Democrats survive in part by convincing people back home that they are nice, positive personalities who are nonthreatening. They aren’t like the crazy Democrats you hear about in Washington. Republicans must make the case that these nice folks back home are transformed by

their airplane ride to Washington. They become big government socialists who advocate crazy values and commit to policies which would destroy America as we know it.

Former Democratic Sen. and Gov. Zell Miller made this case about the gap between back home Democrats and how they are changed when they get to Washington. He wrote a revealing book: “A National Party No More.”

Sen. Miller was so disgusted with the Senate Democratic Caucus’s bitter leftwing partisanship that he endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election in 2004 and spoke at the Republican National Convention.

Sen. Miller was astounded by the scale of difference between Democrats at home and in Washington. After he had been in the Senate about a year, he asked me to come to breakfast, so he could apologize. I was surprised and asked what he was apologizing for. He said that during the years he was governor, he thought my comments about the Democrats in Washington were too partisan and they couldn’t possibly be as bad as I described. He had since concluded I had understated how partisan and leftwing they were.

When even a senior Democratic Governor can be shocked by discovering the gap between the Democrats pretending to be normal back home while being big government socialists in Washington, it is clear that most voters will only see that reality with a lot of help.

This is where Democratic campaign consultant Joseph Napolitan’s principle that you should never underestimate the intelligence of the voters, nor overestimate the amount of knowledge at their disposal is so important.

A major job for Republicans in the next two months is to drive home that the Democratic team collectively is committed to a set of big government socialist policies that simply will not work. Furthermore, these same big government socialist democrats are committed to a series of crazy ideas that if implemented would change America into a different country.

Republicans must win the argument that 2026 is a team election and no matter how pleasant or reasonable your Democrat candidate seems back home, when they get to Washington they will be part of a team whose policies would destroy the American economy, undermine safety at home and abroad, weaken the traditions, values, and principles which have made America an exceptional country, and guarantee a poorer, more divisive, and more dangerous future for all Americans.

If the election is a series of individual choice campaigns, the Democrats might be able to survive.

If it a choice between two teams — and which team has the best solutions, the most American values, and the greatest commitment to keeping America safe — then Republicans will win an historic election this fall.

Refer a friend

Latest from America’s New Majority Project

America's New Majority Project

Beyond Who Pays: The Healthcare System Voters Actually Want

There’s a difference between agreeing with a reform and prioritizing it. The survey asked both, and the gap shows which ideas are ready to lead and which need to earn their place…

Read more

a month ago · 3 likes · 3 comments · America's New Majority Project

Latest from Newt’s World

Celebrate America’s Greatest Innovations

As America continues celebrating its 250th anniversary, join Newt for a special 15-part Newt’s World series exploring the inventions that transformed our nation and changed the world.

From the electric telegraph and the airplane to the internet, GPS, and the smartphone, each episode tells the remarkable story of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and visionaries whose ideas reshaped history and continue to influence our daily lives.

Listen to more at NewtsWorld.com

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.

Watching various big-government socialists win primaries and promptly back away from past social posts and comments is becoming a routine part of the 2026 campaign.

Subscribe now

Suddenly, in state after state, the big-government socialists who won their primaries as left-wing radicals have realized that they are likely to lose their general elections if they stick to the scripts they have been using for years.

Looking at America’s New Majority Project data, which has been polling key issues since 2018, most left-wing, radical, and anti-American positions attract about 15 percent of the vote or less.

Read More

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.

Read more

Newt called Democrats the “party of amnesia,” arguing that candidates now want voters to forget the positions they embraced before winning their nominations.

“Their consultants have said to them, if you remain who you have been, you’re dead,” Newt said. “Therefore, you have to reinvent yourself…”

Newt pointed to Democratic candidates in Wisconsin, Michigan and New York who he said are trying to distance themselves from previous radical positions and present themselves as moderates.

Newt argued the strategy will fail if Republicans remind Americans what these candidates actually stood for before the general election.

Subscribe now

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.

The Democratic Party’s drift into big-government socialism with weird values is beginning to disclose a set of repeating patterns.

Subscribe now

Ideas are born in the academic community. The latest crop emerging there from the far left are weird, outside the mainstream, overwhelmingly opposed by most Americans, and almost certainly impossible to implement.

The Democrats bestow upon the weird ideas an air of moral authority. They become impossible to oppose without risking being smeared.

Read More

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.

Newt argued that Democrats have increasingly embraced big government socialism and cultural positions far outside the views of most Americans. Republicans, he said, must make this a “team election” and connect Democratic candidates across the country to the party they will empower in Washington.

But Newt warned that Republican victory is not guaranteed. The GOP must define what the election is about.

For Newt, the path forward is clear: Republicans must make the midterms a choice about which party Americans trust to create a better future.

Subscribe now

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.

President Donald Trump returned to office determined to lower prices, bring manufacturing back to the United States, and unleash American innovation.

His policies are already producing results. Pharmaceutical companies have announced roughly $500 billion in new American investments in research, manufacturing, and infrastructure. President Trump has also challenged the foreign governments that have been paying artificially low prices for American medicines and leaving American patients to finance much of the world’s medical research.

Subscribe now

This is the right direction: Lower costs for Americans while strengthening the system that produces new treatments and cures.

Unfortunately, the enormous regulatory machinery created by President Joe Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act is threatening to pull the Trump administration in the opposite direction.

A pending rule at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would expand Biden’s system of government drug price controls to include certain newer medicines sooner than investors, researchers, and manufacturers could reasonably have anticipated.

The immediate dispute involves a relatively narrow category of medicines. But the principle at stake is much larger.

Medical innovation requires stable rules.

Developing a new treatment can take a decade or more. Researchers must make scientific judgments, companies must conduct expensive clinical trials, manufacturers must build specialized facilities, and investors must commit capital years before knowing whether a product will ever reach a patient.

All these decisions depend on some reasonable expectation that the government will not fundamentally change the rules after the investments have been made.

This is one of the central dangers of the modern regulatory state. Congress passes a sprawling law, delegates enormous discretion to federal agencies, and allows bureaucrats to continually reinterpret what the law means. Each individual change may sound technical or limited, but together they create a system in which government can rewrite the economics of an investment long after the work has begun.

The current CMS proposal is a perfect example.

Scientists have developed ways to turn some medicines that require hours in an infusion chair into injections that can be administered in minutes—and, in some cases, given in a doctor’s office or at home.

For cancer patients and others with serious illnesses, that can replace hours spent traveling to and sitting in an infusion center with shorter, more convenient treatments. Patients lose less time with their families and at work, while doctors, nurses, and infusion centers can care for more people.

Producing these improvements is not as simple as changing the packaging. The newer medicine requires its own research, clinical work, manufacturing investment, and Food and Drug Administration approval.

Yet CMS is proposing that, for purposes of Biden’s price-control system, some of these separately approved products should be combined with the older medicine on which they were built. As a result, the newer treatment could become subject to government price setting years earlier than it otherwise would.

CMS presents this as closing a potential loophole, but improving a treatment is not a loophole.

Give a gift subscription

If an alteration provides no meaningful benefit, patients, physicians, and health plans should be free to reject it. But when an innovation turns hours of treatment into minutes, reduces the burden on patients, or permits care in a less expensive setting, government should encourage it — not retroactively redefine it as the same old product.

This is exactly how bureaucratic price controls distort innovation. Government officials begin by claiming that they are merely setting a price. They inevitably end up deciding what counts as a new medicine, which improvements deserve recognition, how long an innovation has value, and which future investments are financially possible.

Those decisions will not only affect large pharmaceutical companies. They will affect the venture capital firms, private equity funds, pension funds, research institutions, and individual investors that provide the capital for medical discovery.

Capital can move.

Investors do not have to finance a risky medical project that may take 10 or 15 years to succeed. If Washington demonstrates that bureaucrats can change the rules midway through that process, investors will put their money into artificial intelligence, financial services, real estate, energy, or other industries with more predictable returns. They may also invest in research and manufacturing outside the United States.

The cost will not appear immediately in a federal budget table. It will appear years from now in the form of treatments that were never developed, trials that were never funded, and medical breakthroughs that patients never received.

CMS should withdraw this provision that would prematurely combine separately developed and separately approved medicines for purposes of government price setting. The administration should also conduct a broader review of the Biden-era drug-pricing system to ensure that its implementation is consistent with President Trump’s goals of lowering costs, expanding American manufacturing, and sustaining American leadership in medical innovation.

This is not an argument for accepting high drug prices or protecting every decision made by a pharmaceutical company. President Trump is right to confront corporate middlemen, demand better prices for American patients, and insist that wealthy foreign countries pay their fair share for medicines developed here.

But lowering prices through competition, transparency, and fair dealing is fundamentally different from allowing a labyrinth of federal regulations to make investment increasingly unpredictable.

America cannot remain the world’s leading source of medical breakthroughs if Washington reserves the right to rewrite the economics of those breakthroughs after the research has begun.

President Trump has helped unleash an extraordinary new wave of investment in American medicine. He should make certain that the bureaucratic remnants of the Biden administration do not smother it.

Gingrich 360 consults with clients in the healthcare industry which would be affected by the policies described in this piece.

Refer a friend

Latest from America’s New Majority Project

America's New Majority Project

Beyond Who Pays: The Healthcare System Voters Actually Want

There’s a difference between agreeing with a reform and prioritizing it. The survey asked both, and the gap shows which ideas are ready to lead and which need to earn their place…

Read more

a month ago · 3 likes · 3 comments · America's New Majority Project

Latest from Newt’s World

Celebrate America’s Greatest Innovations

As America continues celebrating its 250th anniversary, join Newt for a special 15-part Newt’s World series exploring the inventions that transformed our nation and changed the world.

From the electric telegraph and the airplane to the internet, GPS, and the smartphone, each episode tells the remarkable story of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and visionaries whose ideas reshaped history and continue to influence our daily lives.

Listen to more at NewtsWorld.com

You can manage your subscription preferences to choose the updates, newsletters, and alerts you want to receive on the website.