September 2, 2016

Hillary Clinton Suggests That Congress Actually Do Something About Predatory Drug Prices

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The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill gave us the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, designed to protect consumers from predatory lending. So how about a Consumer Pharmaceutical Protection Bureau to protect us from predatory drugmakers? That’s pretty much what Hillary Clinton proposed today in the wake of outrage over the 500 percent increase in the cost of EpiPens. Her proposed agency would be empowered to investigate price hikes for old drugs:

Should an excessive, outlier price increase be determined for a long-standing treatment, Hillary’s plan would make new enforcement tools available, including:

  • Making alternatives available and increasing competition: Directly intervening to make treatments available, and supporting alternative manufacturers that enter the market and increase competition, to bring down prices and spur innovation in new treatments.
  • Emergency importation of safe treatments: Broadening access to safe, high-quality alternatives through emergency importation from developed countries with strong safety standards.
  • Penalties for unjustified price increases to hold drug companies accountable and fund expanded access: Holding drug makers accountable for unjustified price increases with new penalties, such as fines — and using the funds or savings to expand access and competition.

In combination with her broader, previously announced prescription drug plan — which addresses the costs facing consumers from both long-standing and patented drugs — these new tools to address price spikes for treatments available for many years will lower the burden of prescription drug costs for all Americans.

EpiPens are hardly the first case of this happening. We’ve seen it many times before, and Republicans and Democrats alike join in a familiar dance: outrage, congressional hearings, and demands that this kind of price gouging end. But that’s it. Congress has no actual power to do anything, and eventually the attention dies away.

So now Hillary Clinton is suggesting that Congress do more. Instead of cheap grandstanding, create an agency with the power to actually do something. Republicans will rush to agree, right? Because they always claim to be as outraged by this stuff as Democrats. Right?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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