Hillary Clinton’s Vision for An Economy Where Our Businesses, Our Workers, and Our Consumers Grow and Prosper Together

On Monday, Hillary Clinton and Hillary for America announced a plan that will ensure that businesses, workers, and consumers can all grow and prosper together. This would be a stark contrast from today’s economy in which one typically suffers at the expense of the others. HFA released details of her plan which are outlined below. The full plan can be read on The Briefing.

Hillary Clinton believes we need to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. But today, there are still powerful interests fighting to protect their own profits and privileges at the expense of everyone else. Too many of the rules and incentives in our economy encourage those at the top to abuse their power and take advantage of consumers, workers, small businesses, and taxpayers. That makes it tougher for even well-meaning CEOs to take the high road.

In recent months, we’ve seen three egregious examples of these problems. We saw a drug company, Mylan, excessively raise the price of lifesaving EpiPens without justification. We saw one of our country’s biggest banks, Wells Fargo, bully thousands of employees into committing fraud on unsuspecting customers. And now we’ve learned the latest on Donald Trump: In one year, he lost nearly a billion dollars; he stiffed small businesses, laid off workers, and walked away from hardworking communities; and he apparently got to avoid paying taxes for nearly two decades—while tens of millions of working families paid theirs. That’s what he calls “smart” business.

Today, Clinton is offering her vision for an economy where our businesses, our workers, and our consumers grow and prosper together. She’s outlining a set of proposals to rewrite the rules so that more companies that do right by workers, small businesses, customers, and taxpayers.

Clinton will:

1. Eliminate Tax Breaks that Allow Corporations and the Wealthy to Avoid Paying Their Fair Share

• Shut down the “private tax system” for the most fortunate, starting by immediately closing egregious loopholes and restoring basic fairness to our tax code.
• Reform our tax code to reward investments in America – and stop companies from shifting jobs and profits overseas

2. Protect Consumers from Unfair and Deceptive Practices

• Strengthen consumer financial protection, including by restricting practices that businesses like Wells Fargo have used to lock the consumers they’ve harmed out of court
• Respond to unjustified price increases in long-standing, lifesaving drugs like EpiPens

3. Promoting Free and Fair Competition and Stopping Big Businesses from Hurting Small Business

• Crack down on big companies that repeatedly exploit their power to stiff small businesses – and give small businesses the power to respond
• A new commitment to promote competition, address excessive concentration and the abuse of economic power, and strengthen antitrust laws and enforcement

4. Rewrite the Rules So Workers Share in the Profits They Create

• Reward companies that share profits with their employees, not just their executives
• Fight for unions that built the American middle class and strengthen collective bargaining
• Encourage businesses to provide worker training and apprenticeships
• Make the minimum wage a living wage and fight for equal pay and overtime
• Guarantee paid leave and make affordable, high-quality childcare available to all

Full fact sheet available here.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: The Briefing

Hillary Clinton Announces Plan to Combat High Prescription Drug Prices

On Friday, Hillary Clinton announced a plan to combat the rising cost of prescription drugs, particularly the excessive rise in costs of live saving prescriptions like the EpiPen. Clinton’s plan would create a federal team to monitor drug prices and track increases. Her plan also provides several actions the government could take when drug prices have been raised excessively such as fines and increased access to treatment programs. An outline of Clinton’s proposal is below, and the full plan can be read on The Briefing.

• Making alternatives available and increasing competition
• Emergency importation of safe treatments
• Penalties for unjustified price increases to hold drug companies accountable and fund expanded access
• Dedicated oversight to protect consumers
• Strong new enforcement measures to respond when there are unjustified, outlier price increases that threaten public health
  • Directly intervening to make treatments available, and supporting generic and alternative manufacturers that enter the market and increase competition to bring down prices
  • Broadening access to safe, high-quality generic and alternative competitors through emergency importation
  • Holding drug makers accountable for unjustified price increases with new penalties – and using the funds to expand access and competition
• Cap monthly and annual out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs to save patients with chronic or serious health conditions hundreds or thousands of dollars
• Clear out the FDA generic backlog
• Prohibit “pay for delay” arrangements that keep generic competition off the market
• Ensure American consumers are getting value for their drugs
• Stop direct-to-consumer drug company advertising subsidies, and reinvest funds in research
• Require drug companies that benefit from taxpayers’ support to invest in research, not marketing or profits
• Allow Medicare to negotiate drug and biologic prices and demand higher rebates for prescription drugs in Medicare

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: The Briefing, The New York Times

Hillary Clinton Statement on EpiPen Pricing

Hillary Clinton called out drug maker Mylan for the increase in the price of its EpiPen product. An EpiPen is used to prevent anaphylactic shock by those with serious allergy attacks. The active drug in the product, the hormone epinephrine, costs less than $1 for the amount in a single dose. Yet, researchers note that the price of the EpiPen has increased 400% over the past few years with one EpiPen costing $57 in 2007 and a two pack of EpiPens costing $600 today. Clinton is not alone in asking Mylan for explanation. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Claire McCaskill of Missouri have also sent letters to the manufacture. Late last year, Clinton proposed updates to prescription drug regulations that will prevent drug makers from overcharging for medications. A copy of Clinton’s statement is below.

“Millions of Americans with severe allergies rely on their EpiPens.  When an allergic reaction leads to anaphylactic shock, a shot of epinephrine can literally be the difference between life and death.  But now, just as parents are about to send kids with severe food and insect allergies back to school, the EpiPen’s manufacturer is hiking its price to an all-time high.

Over the last several years, Mylan Pharmaceuticals has increased the price of EpiPens by more than 400%.  They’re now charging up to $600 for a two-EpiPen set that must be replaced every 12-18 months. This both increases out-of-pocket costs for families and first responders, and contributes to higher premiums for all Americans and their employers.

That’s outrageous — and it’s just the latest troubling example of a company taking advantage of its consumers. I believe that our pharmaceutical and biotech industries can be an incredible source of American innovation, giving us revolutionary treatments for debilitating diseases.  But it’s wrong when drug companies put profits ahead of patients, raising prices without justifying the value behind them. 

That’s why I’ve put forward a plan to address exorbitant drug price hikes like these.  As part of my plan, I’ve made clear that pharmaceutical manufacturers should be required to explain significant price increases, and prove that any additional costs are linked to additional patient benefits and better value.  Since there is no apparent justification in this case, I am calling on Mylan to immediately reduce the price of EpiPens.

In addition, when it comes to treatments like delivering epinephrine that have been available for decades, my plan encourages the production of alternative products.  That’s how we can harness the power of competition to keep drug prices at a level that all Americans can afford.”

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

News Source: The Verge