OPINION:
I’m Anath Hartmann, Deputy Commentary Editor here at The Washington Times. Here’s a brief look at some of the pieces running this week.
We’ve had several columns on last weekend’s strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israel, including one by our columnist Clifford May, who makes the case for President Trump receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for last weekend’s operation.
He’s also orchestrated a military response of stunning power and precision. Since 1979, Iran’s rulers have been vowing death to America. They’ve lacked the means to that end, but they’ve been working on that. Nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them anywhere in the world, that would be a start. In the meantime, Iran’s jihadi rulers have been killing Americans, more than a thousand, including peacekeepers in Beirut in 1983, and U.S. military personnel in Iraq, murdered by Shia militias funded, armed, and instructed by Tehran.
Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, writes a piece for us on what he calls “Washington’s favorite con game,” programs advertised as compassionate lifelines that quietly morph into cash machines for entrenched interests. He is referring to the federal 340B drug discount program created more than 30 years ago with the aim of making pharmaceuticals more affordable by offering the drugs to “covered entities,” including hospitals and clinics that serve low-income and uninsured patients.
What began as a targeted safety support has metastasized into a sprawling multibillion-dollar system with minimal guardrails, Forbes writes. Participation has exploded. Large, sophisticated hospital systems, some with gleaming campuses and healthy balance sheets, have entered the program in force. The opportunity to pay a low price for a drug and then charge Medicaid a lot more for reimbursement is simply too attractive to ignore.
Forbes’ suggested fix, the Trump administration’s 340B rebate model pilot program, which would install basic guardrails on it. And Congress should treat the rebate model as a starting point, an invitation to modernize a program that has drifted far from its original laudable mission.
Washington Times commentary editor Kelly Sadler writes on the need for President Trump to “take Greenland,” given how little the U.S. can rely on Europe, as evidenced by its refusal to help the administration execute the Iran strikes.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer blocked Mr. Trump from using the Diego Garcia airbase to carry out U.S. strikes on Iran, Sadler writes. Worried about the international legality of the strikes, Mr. Starmer was clear Saturday that the “United Kingdom played no role” in the joint U.S. and Israeli effort that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In a joint statement after the bombings, Germany, France and the U.K. urged the U.S. to get back to negotiations with Tehran. A suggestion akin, Sadler says, to asking it to sit down with the Nazis.
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