Passing the two health-care-reform bills is the right thing to do. If they don’t, Big Pharma will continue to gouge Medicare, and millions of purchasers of Obamacare policies will receive notices of higher premiums going into the midterms. Democrats should go ahead and pass such a bill quickly, before Manchin changes his mind again. Manchin told Schumer that he is still willing to vote for a Democratic bill to limit prescription-drug costs and extend subsidies to people who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. On Thursday, without warning, Manchin reversed his position again, with his spokesman citing high inflation as the reason. Then, in a step earlier this year that again raised hopes, Manchin indicated he would support a narrower bill that included tax credits for green energy and higher taxes on the rich. This stunt scuttled months of efforts on the part of Schumer and other Democrats to rescue something from the original Biden plan, which Manchin deep-sixed this past December. In a meeting on Thursday with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the senator from West Virginia delivered a crippling blow to what was left of Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, saying he wouldn’t support any new legislation to tackle green energy or reverse the Trump-G.O.P. Last month, I wrote a column that was headlined “ Is Joe Manchin About to Play the Role of Democratic Spoiler Again?” In retrospect, a better headline might have been “Will Lucy Pull Away the Football from Chuck Again?” Of course Manchin did.

Utterly barbaric