Last week, we learned that Merck is planning to charge Americans forty times its cost for a COVID drug whose development was subsidized by the American government. The situation spotlights two sets of facts that have also gone largely unmentioned in the legislative debate over whether to let Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices.

Fact one: Americans are facing not merely expensive drugs, but prices that are examples of outright profiteering.

Fact two: In many cases, the medicines we are being gouged on are those that we the public already paid for.