Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

Bredesen Visits Newspaper to Discuss Campaign Issues

Posted

McKENZIE (October 18) — Former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen (D-Nashville), a candidate for U.S. Senate, was in McKenzie on Thursday to discuss campaign issues including a plan to reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals and the national deficit.
Sitting in the composition room of The McKenzie Banner and speaking to the newspaper staff, Bredesen said Congress should enact legislation to require pharmaceutical companies to comply with a “most favored nation” –style policy, in which pharmaceutical companies cannot charge Americans more than people in other countries for the same medications...
 Now here’s the idea for President Trump, first of all you are an excellent negotiator, you’ve had a lot of success in your life, and you’re familiar with the idea of the most favored nations clause. This is something that started out in the world of international trade where we said with each individual country, here’s the arrangement we’ll make with tariffs, that you promise that you won’t give anyone else a better deal. Those clauses are common in business, I’m sure President Trump has incorporated those clauses in his business, I certainly have. We are likely, in this country, almost always the largest purchaser of one of those drugs in the world that I’ve just described...   

It is certainly an expansion of the area of the idea of America First in these things, since usually these drugs I just mentioned to you are probably very innocuous, GlaxoSmithKline is a British company while AstraZeneca is a British and Swedish company, and the last one that I mentioned, Novantis is a Swiss company. So I’m saying to Mr. Trump, a businessman and negotiator--why don’t we work together to try to find a way, a bipartisan way to begin to bring these things under control."

Bredesen said President Trump is an excellent negotiator and he could negotiate with the companies to save Medicare and working Americans money on their pharmaceuticals.
He said the country’s rising deficit is also a problem. In just a few years, it will grow to over $1 trillion annually. The country has experienced deficits during national emergencies and wars, but not to this extent in prosperous times of peace.
Bredesen said the nation’s government could partially resolve this problem by freezing costs and allowing the economic growth catch up to reduce the deficit.
As the governor of Tennessee, he was faced with such a situation in the first year in office. The budget was reduced by nine percent across the board except on K-12 education. It was painful, noted the governor.
He suggested universal high-speed internet can be achieved through the TVA region by allowing the federal utility to partner with its cooperatives to provide the service. TVA and the cooperatives already serve the seven-state area. They own the utility poles where fiber could be suspended and provided to the customer. High-speed internet is as important today as electrification when TVA was formed, said Bredesen. For-profit internet providers are not interested in serving rural customers in sparsely populated areas.