A dark money group is lying about Medicare cuts

Who the fuck are the “American Prosperity Alliance?”

Cory Doctorow
4 min readAug 11, 2022

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A cigar-chomping plutocrat in a tuxedo and tophat is wielding a marionette; he is wearing a domino mask; the marionette’s head is a television; the television is displaying a framegrab from the American Prosperity Alliance’s deceptive ad, falsely claiming that $300b will be cut from Medicare, superimposed over the heads of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. There is a purple ‘supernova’ flare effect behind the television. The figure is posed against a background of white pills. Image: Grumpy Pudd

The “American Prosperity Alliance” does not exist, except as an anonymously controlled bank account that has paid for the production and dissemination of a slick ad that spreads the falsehood that the Democrats have cut $300b from Medicare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xCep6NvbhE

Let me repeat: this is a lie. What “American Prosperity Alliance” is talking about here is a provision in the bill that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices, rather than simply paying whatever Big Pharma wants to charge. This practice is why Americans pay more for their drugs than, say, Canadians:

https://personalimportation.org/dramatic-drug-price-differences-canada-vs-us/

To be clear: the new bill will curb the eye-watering public price-gouging that Big Pharma enjoys, and halt the transfer of $300b in public money to pharma companies’ shareholders, by allowing Medicare to bargain to get prices similar to those paid by other governments in countries like Australia, Canada, and the UK.

There is no universe in which this a $300b cut to Medicare. It’s like the Dems have pledged to halt $300b in fraud and the American Prosperity Alliance went to the country’s elderly…

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