About Keira Thompson

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Public Citizen in CNN Op-Ed: Congress, don’t fall for Big Pharma’s gimmick

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Vijay Das is the health policy advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, and today CNN published Congress, don’t fall for Big Pharma’s gimmick, his op-ed about how much the Big Pharma lobby is costing the American public.

“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli was labeled the “most hated man on the Internet” after he raised the price of an HIV/AIDs medication’s price by 5,000 percent.

His smug prioritization of profits over the people who are prescribed the medication brought to the forefront a conversation that has been happening over pharmacy lines and kitchen counters for years: what to do about the high cost of drugs. There has been an explosion of costs not only for new treatments, but also older medicines that work perfectly well. The high price of prescription drugs has affected the everyday choices of Americans as long as the corner drug store has existed.

It’s easy for me to read Vijay’s article and feel personally affronted – I still talk to my grandmother very often, and she anguishes over how expensive her blood pressure medication is. Thirty percent of Americans are known to skimp on their medicines in order to cut down on costs, but when life-or-death medications are out of reach, the public starts to speak up.

Rather than simply charging less, the industry is pushing for watered-down safeguards it claims will lower development costs and get patented drugs to market sooner and cheaper. It will deploy 1,200 lobbyists to try to pass the 21st Century Cures Act. This bill has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives and will have its companion bill introduced in the Senate.

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Readings on Riders

Ideological riders are a constant threat to the budget process.

Big business backers have been sticking up for their corporate special interests by   by pushing to attach policy provisions that they can’t pass through regular order to the must-pass budget package.

And we’ve been sticking up for the public interest in-kind.

Right-wing lawmakers are holding the budget hostage and blaming everyone but themselves for the stalemate– refugees, students, Planned Parenthood, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to name just a few. A few examples of the policy riders being considered are those that would  block money in politics reforms, obstruct regulations meant to prevent the next Wall Street crisis, and attack worker and environmental protections.

So after weeks of debate – including a brief bright spot when the bi-partisan budget framework that lifted the sequester spending caps was announced – we still don’t have a final budget omnibus package. And they’re still threatening a shutdown over these ideological riders.

As lawmakers continue to try to worm riders into the budget appropriations process, Public Citizen and nearly 200 coalition partners have come together to oppose riders in the final budget.

Below are several articles written by coalition partners that speak to the true human cost of just a handful of riders in the final budget deal, the real overarching cost is incalculable.

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Under Attack

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During last week’s Republican debate on FOX Business, an ad paid for by the American Action Network (AAN) depicted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) workers robotically denying personal loans to needy individuals.

AAN paid $500,000 to run the ad seven times during the debate, attacking the agency and its champions – Senator Elizabeth Warren and CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

The ad’s dismal, Soviet-inspired concept sets the scene for misleading accusations of injustice against consumers. Warren and Cordray are portrayed on red banners as dictators while the assembly line rubber-stamps personal loan denials – a far cry from the work the CFPB actually does, such as providing ways for ripped-off consumers to hold banks accountable and reining in “payday” lenders that prey on military families.

However, beyond its sham portrayal of the bureau’s work, the ad is a symptom of a bigger problem: A concerted push to stop or delay the successful work of the agency that has returned over $11 billion dollars to harmed consumers. The real worry about the ad should be with the huge sums of money being funneled into the larger effort to thwart the agency.

A timely example of these efforts to block the CFPB’s work are right-wing lawmakers’ concurrent attempts to insert riders—or unrelated policy proposals—into the federal spending bills in order to weaken consumer financial protections issued by the CFPB, as well as undermine the structure and set-up of the Bureau.

By attacking the agency created to look out for consumer interests in the financial market, these corporate players are in-effect attacking consumers themselves.

So why is the CFPB under attack?

Follow the money. Two American Action Network board members lobby on behalf of Navient, a student loan provider currently under investigation by the CFPB (and several other regulatory authorities) for allegedly overcharging and mistreating borrowers. And another board member lobbies on behalf of both student loan and payday lending clients, practices also under examination by the CFPB. This lobbying seems to be paying off.

Policy riders that would cripple the CFPB’s ability to do its job are leaching through the appropriations process, piggybacking on budget bills. Here’s what the anti-CFPB and anti-financial reform riders would do:
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Banking the Un-Banked

At a recent event, Senator Elizabeth Warren described postal banking as a triple win for the government, public and postal service. For the public it could be an essential new route to provide basic banking services to rural areas and inner cities.

One in four households are estimated to be underbanked – with high proportions of those under the age of 25 and in black or Hispanic communities. Basic banking services like ATM access, check-cashing, and small-scale lending could save these underbanked households $2,412 each year.

The underbanked are also most vulnerable to the practices of predatory financial service providers – nearly half of Americans would have to borrow money should they have a financial emergency that cost over $400. That’s the equivalent of an emergency room visit or a car accident. This has led to fringe lenders in the U.S. outnumbering McDonalds and Starbucks.

The poorest American families have been faced with exacerbated charges on their earned income while the majority of bank closures happen in the areas they live, the areas that are the most in need.

Even community banks and (in some cases) credit unions, which once existed to serve the underbanked, can be bogged down with account fees and the cost of staying open that make it impossible for lower income clients to continue banking there.

Postal banking is a rational solution to the many problems faced by the chronically underbanked, according to the book How the Other Half Banks, by Mehrsa Baradaran, who also spoke at the event.

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