Thread/story on how Big Pharma won the right to price gouge. Story here: theintercept.com/2020/03/02/cor…
It starts with the '94 Gingrich Revolution, with the GOP taking the House and Senate after Clinton's flopped health care reform fight /1
It starts with the '94 Gingrich Revolution, with the GOP taking the House and Senate after Clinton's flopped health care reform fight /1
A few months later, NIH, under pressure from Big Pharma, announces it is rescinding the "reasonable pricing" rule. No longer will drugs produced with publicly funded research be required to be sold to the public at a reasonable price./2 ott.nih.gov/sites/default/… 
Next, independent Rep. Bernie Sanders, not yet a senator, introduces an amendment in '96 to reinstate the rule. It fails in the GOP-led House 242-180 /3
In 2000, Sanders comes back to it, and manages to pass his amendment through the House. Progressive icon Paul Wellstone introduces a companion version in the Senate. Nature magazine editorializes on it /4 theintercept.com/2020/03/02/cor…
Wellstone's amendment comes to the Senate floor, where there's a motion to table it, which means kill it.
Joe Biden votes to table it. It's defeated. /5
Joe Biden votes to table it. It's defeated. /5
So the Senate and House bills go to conference committee. Sanders' amendment is stripped out.
Side note: Sanders and Wellstone were two of the most prominent white supporters of Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, and both were elected to Congress in 1990.
And so now here we are, unless Congress changes the law, which they could do easily as they pass coronavirus funding. theintercept.com/2020/03/02/cor…
Here's Sanders on the House floor explaining his amendment
