President Donald Trump is continuing his battles with the Big Pharma industry well beyond just with second term opening moves like making Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the new Health and Human Services Secretary.

This week, the Trump administration sided against big drugmakers in rejecting a bid to dismantle a drug discount program that is a specific benefit to working class, rural, red state voters — you know, the Republican base.

Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Novartis have been trying to nix the drug discount program, known as 340B, through the back door by claiming it only requires them to offer “rebates” — not actual discounts– to hospitals that serve working class and rural voters particularly in red states by a lopsided margin.

Hospitals in these areas rely on it, not just to provide medicine to some patients at more accurate and real cost than big pharma’s astronomical sticker price, but also to, you know, stay open and like, employ people such emergency room doctors and nurses. Not like anyone needs those near a farm or anything, right?

Going from a discount model — which is mandated by a federal law written by Trump supporter and former Sen. Orrin Hatch — and switching to a “rebate” instead could wreck the finances of rural providers at a time that those same providers are struggling to even stay open at all.

According to Axios, the administration’s filing blasted Big Pharma for not “work[ing] with the agency to develop a price mechanism that addressed all stakeholders’ concerns” and “instead ‘rushing to court to seek an order allowing them to unilaterally impose rebate models.”

The proposed rebate models would disrupt how the 340B program has operated for more than 30 years, and HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration “appropriately declined to disturb the status quo for now,” Trump administration attorneys wrote.

The filing noted that drugmakers could have worked with the agency to develop a price mechanism that addressed all stakeholders’ concerns but that they instead “rushed to court to seek an order allowing them to unilaterally impose rebate models on covered entities.”

Now a lot of states have in recent years moved to protect the program with state-level legislation that, guess what, the pharma industry has also continuously tried to destroy.

But the Trump administration is, once again and already just weeks into office, fighting back on exactly what he said he would fight back on.

Oh and by the way? Axios and the Democrats are trying to spin this as Trump taking up Joe Biden’s cause. The case is being brought by the pharma companies in response to actions taken by the Biden admin, and the Trump team is arguing they acted properly. But Trump taking up Biden’s cause? Not hardly. During Trump’s first term, his HHS also moved to protect the drug pricing program by setting ceiling prices for drugs sold within it. You know, pre-Biden? So ignore that spin.

Fighting Big Pharma? It’s a really good thing. Trust me. I know. Firsthand.