In politics, you’ll often see similar strategies, where someone makes noise wanting Policy A as a distraction from the fact that they actually want Policy B. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used “triangular diplomacy” with China to get at Russia, for example.

We’re seeing some of that play out now, with one Big Pharma-linked group attacking a federal program under the auspices of helping children, when really what they’re trying to do is protect their bottom line.

The advocacy group Building America’s Future has launched an expensive multistate ad campaign to attack the federal 340B program. Here in Utah, the campaign has grabbed headlines, as pharmacist Sen. Evan Vickers (R-Richfield) is working on legislation to protect and expand 340B. A 33-year-old drug-pricing program largely created by former Sen. Orrin Hatch, 340B serves low-income, uninsured patients by requiring drugmakers to sell drugs at a discount to qualifying hospitals, if those drugmakers are also using taxpayer-funded programs like Medicaid to bolster their bottom line.

This program is also used by a lot of hospitals across Utah and elsewhere whose patients are predominantly rural and working class (also known as Republicans) — as opposed to urban uber-progressives in Berkeley, California — to simply stay open.

The thrust of the ad campaign is that the already limited resources of 340B are being spent for both illegal immigrants and transgender hormone treatments, neither of which are too popular in red states these days. The campaign is also running in Kentucky, Nebraska and North Dakota, and similar state-based legislation to expand the program in Virginia — the only state in the nation where Democrats seemed to hold their own in 2024 — was partially rejected last year.

But here’s the thing: Big Pharma — which has been widely speculated to be the source of Building America’s Future’s financing — doesn’t really care about transgender or immigrant issues. They’re using them as a decoy. Big Pharma wants to shut down 340B because the program costs them money. Remember, it requires price reductions.

When Arkansas passed legislation to protect its 340B drug-pricing program, for example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America fought it all the way to the Supreme Court, who refused to hear their appeal.

In 2020 alone, 340B hospitals saved people nearly $85 billion, according to a report by the American Hospital Association. That’s a lot of money to you and me, but to Big Pharma that’s just 3% of their global revenues. And working-class Utahns in Richfield and elsewhere can always just go without life-saving treatment, but how else are pharmaceutical executives supposed to become billionaires? Just slowly continue to raise prices on prescription drugs well above the rate of inflation? Or wait for another pandemic?

It’s bad enough that that the pharmaceutical industry has done plenty itself to attract and exploit illegal immigrants to the U.S. But it’s uniquely hypocritical — that is to say lying — for Big Pharma to say they want to “protect” kids from transgender hormone treatments, given how much of a cash cow those same drugs are for the companies that make them. Pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly, Viatris, AbbVie, ASCEND Therapeutics, Pfizer, Novartis and Endo International are all major companies profiteering off the lucrative transgender hormone therapy market. This includes the controversial topic of puberty blockers, which are used for non-FDA approved “gender-affirming care” for minors.

Some of this is hard to see on the surface. For example, AbbVie’s Lupron has applications other than blocking puberty — notably treating prostate cancer — so it’s easy to hide the numbers on it. But in 2020 alone, sales of Lupron generated $752 million. But when Big Pharma supports legislation like the so-called Equality Act, it’s easy to see their motivation. When Eli Lilly donated $500,000 to the Trans Solutions Research and Resource Center, that was pocket change for them.

Transgenderism is the only civil rights movement in world history to have such an obvious profit motive. But that’s only in the short-term, because those unethical companies profiteering off permanently life-altering drugs to minors now will have lousy ROI (return on investment) once the lawsuits start hammering them.

Soulless, multinational corporations have long pretended that “those companies who do well have an obligation to do good!” Globalist companies have spent years trying to trick the liberally minded with wokescreen buzzwords like diversity and sustainability while employing slave labor or polluting horribly. Now they’re trying to trick the conservative-minded with MAGA buzzwords when they’re the actual bad actor in this scenario. Let’s none of us fall for these shameless decoys.

Jared Whitley has worked in the U.S. Senate and White House. He has an MBA from Hult Business School in Dubai. Last year, the Top of the Rockies competition named him the best columnist in the Intermountain West.