how is this technology?
Technology is not just integrated circuits.
This is biotech and patents, both firmly relevant to technology overall.
Sounds like a toothless threat, following through would upset too many campaign donors.
It’s not toothless. There is an existing law that allows the government to issue their own licenses for drugs still under patent developed using at least some amount of tax payer money under certain circumstances. It’s pretty broadly worded in the law when this can be done, so previously regulations were made to define the circumstances more precisely. The administration is issuing a new regulation that says one of those circumstances will now include if the drug is high priced limiting its access. Because new regulations issued by the executive branch have a mandatory public comment period after they are proposed before they take effect, its not active quite yet but will be soon (that’s why every headline about this is using the dumb vague word of threaten). The drug companies are already promising to sue to try and overturn the new regulation. So yeah it’s got teeth.
The corporate christofascist supreme court will overturn any executive power expansion as long as their team is not the executive.
Maybe. Hopefully not. All the more reason to follow every little process for new executive regulations flawlessly when enacting it, like the 6 month comment period. A lot of people are saying just do it immediately. But that’d just be giving the pharma companies and republicans an easy out to strike it down in the courts.
Thank you, I came to this comment section hoping someone would explain what exactly the basis in law was for this.
This is the specific law Biden is trying to derive the authority from if you’re interested in more:
Yeah I think the first reaction to this was too hot. The government probably doesn’t want to seize patents and this is really meant as a warning to get pharma to keep drug prices down more reasonable prices.
They are threatening to fix a problem no other civilised country has? How about actually fixing it? Right, that would be “doing something”, kryptonite of every american politician.
“checks and balances” theoretically protects us from tyranny.
Also allows cronies to protect their own interests by blocking any proposed changes.
Yes and no. Yes, normally you do have a series of institutions overseeing different parts of the government and making sure it acts within the laws but in USA this system is simply broken. In normal countries constitution is the ultimate guarantee and the judiciary 'check’s if laws are in accordance with it. The judiciary functions as a independent branch with judges being selected by other judges to the most important roles. In USA supreme court judges are directly selected by the president which totally invalidates the entire system. At the same time, in every other country, it’s assumed that party with the majority in the parliament simply has the mandate to govern and (surprise) does govern. They use this majority to do reforms and pass laws. In USA not only the system is designed in a way that does not let the party with majority support actually control the government (electoral college, the senate, election cycle), they also came up with fictional mechanisms to further weaken the ruling party (filibuster). As a result the ‘checks and balances’ make sure that no true reforms are possible while weakening the judicial oversight and constitutional rights. Worst system you could think of.
white house threatening that it might actually protect its citizens from corporations
