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

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News Source: The Briefing, The New York Times

Clinton Proposes Protections for Small Business

On Thursday, Hillary Clinton and her campaign released her proposal to protect small businesses that do business with larger businesses. Clinton cited the failure of Republican Donald Trump’s Atlantic City casino as an example of a decision that harmed a number of small, local businesses. The key point of the plan to prevent big business from stiffing small businesses when the bill is due. The plan would give small business owners the tools to fight back. The full proposal can be read on The Briefing, but an outline of the plan is below:

• Enhance legal protections for small businesses that are repeatedly stiffed by large firms and give them better tools to protect themselves against predatory behavior by large companies.
• Use the leverage of more than $400 billion in federal government contracting to encourage businesses to pay their suppliers in full and on time.
• Expand working capital for small businesses so they can thrive and grow, and weather difficulties when larger customers stiff them or do not pay on time.
• Strengthen oversight and penalties when large companies repeatedly stiff smaller businesses and give small businesses better tools to protect themselves against predatory behavior.
  • Ensure federal regulatory oversight of proven bad actors.
  • Stop large companies from using expensive litigation hurdles to deny small businesses their right to a remedy – and give small businesses recourse to take on predatory behavior.
• Use the leverage of more than $400 billion in federal government contracting to ensure big businesses pay their suppliers on time.
  • Push for prompt payment through the power of the federal purse.
  • Expedite payments to federal contractors.
  • Increase federal contracting with small businesses.
• Expand support for working capital so small businesses can grow and thrive.
  • Expand access to working capital.
  • Lower working capital fees for small businesses in underserved communities.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

News Source: The Briefing, The Washington Post