After weeks of work from advocates and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, the Senate voted to pass the FIRST STEP Act.
The Senate passed a major criminal justice bill, the FIRST STEP Act, by a vote of 87-12 Tuesday night.
The bill still must go to the House, which passed a different version of the bill in May, but today's vote was an emotional victory for advocacy organizations and a bipartisan group of lawmakers who have worked for years, with little success, to shepherd a criminal justice bill to the Senate floor. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) hugged each other as the final votes rolled in.
Getting to that point required unending back-and-forth negotiation, numerous rewrites, rallies in the sweltering D.C. summer heat, convincing the notoriously flighty president to back the bill, and then convincing Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to put it on the Senate schedule—not to mention holding together a coalition of liberal, conservative, and evangelical groups.
"Historic" and "once-in-a-generation," senators called the White House-backed bill.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a former opponent of criminal justice reform who became one of the chief authors of the bill, said in a statement that its passage was "an important victory in our years-long effort, which has resulted in a broad bipartisan recognition of the need for reforms."
In reality, the FIRST STEP Act is large but modest, and filled with numerous exceptions to gain the backing of law enforcement organizations, whose support was critical in gaining Trump's endorsement. The bill would expand reentry and job training opportunities for federal inmates, ban the shackling of pregnant inmates, and require inmates to be housed within 500 miles of their families, when possible.
It also includes four changes to federal sentencing law that would reduce some mandatory minimum sentences, expand judges' discretion under the so-called safety valve, and make the reductions to crack cocaine sentences under the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 apply retroactively to current inmates.
I now think of that often-played band when I see this thread title on the RAFT. Not that they're a failure by any means. They are quite talented but are pretty monotonous and non-distinctive for my tastes. They seem pretty generic - even if the front-man is dating Krysten Ritter - aka "Jane Margolis" and "Jessica Jones".
Donald Trump is ready to use trade talks to force the National Health Service to pay more for its drugs as part of his scheme to "put American patients first”.
Mr Trump has claimed that the high costs faced by US patients are a direct result of other countries’ health services “freeloading” at America’s expense.
Alex Azar, the US Health and Human Services Secretary, has said Washington will use its muscle to push up drug prices abroad, to lower the cost paid by patients in the United States.
"On the foreign side, we need to, through our trade negotiations and agreements, pressure them," Azar said on CNBC.
"And so we pay less, they pay more. It shouldn't be a one-way ratchet. We all have some skin in this game."
He continued: "The reason why they are getting better net prices than we get is their socialised system."
In the UK, prices are dictated in part by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) which has been successful in securing discounts for some of the costliest drugs.
In June 2007, Azar was hired by Eli Lilly and Company chief executive officer Sidney Taurel to be the company’s top lobbyist and spokesman as its Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Communications. Azar left the position after Barack Obama was elected and the company wanted a member of the Democratic Party to have the position.
In April 2009, Azar became Vice President of Lilly’s U.S. Managed Healthcare Services organization and its Puerto Rico affiliate. In 2009, the company paid $1.415 billion to settle criminal charges regarding its promotion of antipsychotic drug Zyprexa (olanzapine) for off-label uses between 1999 and 2005.
Effective January 1, 2012, Azar became President of Lilly USA, LLC, the largest division of Eli Lilly and Company, and was responsible for the company's entire operations in the United States. Prices for drugs rose substantially under Azar's leadership. In connection with the position, Azar served on the board of directors of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a pharmaceutical lobby.
In January 2017, Azar resigned from Eli Lilly.He also resigned from the board of directors of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
Great article on various approaches to ending the opiod epidemic. Overall, the panel of 30 experts recommended spending almost half the money on addiction treatment and only 11% of the funds on attacking the supply of opioids. No one recommended spending any money on The Wall.
It's a fairly quick read with quite a few charts that bring the main points home.
i'm surprised someone hasn't built a retirement community on a the border (either northern or southern)
people could walk across to a facility and take their meds
Is it time to pitch my TV show Breaking Good? It's about a person who sets up a clandestine drug lab to sell insulin and other drugs after the industry jacks up the prices.
Many critics of America's pharmaceutical industry have argued that the best way to bring down drug prices is to let Americans buy prescription drugs from countries with nationalized health care systems. Those countries' governments negotiate lower drug prices, and their consumers pay a fraction of what Americans do for most pharmaceutical products. If Americans could order from overseas, the theory goes, pharmaceutical companies would have to lower their prices here. (They arguably can't raise them abroad.)
This week, Vermont took a step toward testing that theory by passing legislation that would create a system for wholesale importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, signed the bill Wednesday after the state's overwhelmingly Democratic legislature voted 141–2 in the House and unanimously in the Senate to pass S.175.
"It is outrageous that a commonly used medicine like Lipitor costs 46 times more per pill in the United States than in Canada," Vermont Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe said in a statement released by the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), which wrote the model legislation on which Vermont's bill is based. "In fact, legislative staff determined that importing just two diabetes drugs from Canada would save the state's teacher health insurance plan more than $500,000 each year."
