Americans pay more than twice as much for prescription drugs as patients in other nations. On average, we pay $250 for a prescription that costs someone in Europe $100. Other nations negotiate the drug prices their citizens pay, but the Big Pharma lobbying machine has co-opted Congress into preventing the U.S. from doing the same. They’ve even tried to prevent us from buying lower-cost versions of our medications from Canada.
As originally proposed by President Biden, the Reconciliation Bill (also known as the American Jobs and Family Plans, the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill, the human infrastructure bill, and the Build Back Better Act) included provisions for lowering drug costs and negotiating prices. In addition, the resulting drug-cost savings to Medicare and other government health programs are necessary to offset the cost of expanding Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing. Without drug price negotiations, other provisions of the bill will have to be reduced or cut entirely. But Big Pharma is waging an all-out propaganda war to protect their obscenely high profits at our expense. Last week they managed to line up at least three conservative Democrats, including Scott Peters (D-San Diego), to block the drug-price negotiations provision in the House bill.
Tell President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, and our two senators that we’re tired of being price gouged by the pharmaceutical industry. We want them to stand firm and continue fighting for strong, effective provisions in the bill to reduce our prescription costs to the same level as in other modern industrialized nations.
And while we’re asking that, we should also keep urging our MoC to include a provision in the Reconciliation Bill that authorizes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue emergency orders—such as eviction moratoriums—in a public health emergency.
Contact your Members of Congress and the White House and tell them: include lower prescription drug costs in the reconciliation bill!
Yes please, pass the Freedom to Vote Act ASAP!
We can tell that the Freedom to Vote Act introduced last week was written by 2 former state Secretaries of State (Senators Manchin and Padilla), because it contains strong safeguards for our fundamental voting rights. It is particularly timely because its primary focus is establishing a national standard for how states conduct federal elections. This would counteract the wave of new laws rolled out by Republican-led legislatures to restrict voting and subvert elections.This bill has given new momentum to the fight for voting rights and is our best chance for democracy reform in years. We need President Biden and both of our Senators to use their influence to get it passed ASAP.
Contact your Senators and President Biden and tell them: pass the Freedom To Vote Act ASAP!
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All are welcome to join our events!
ISF Federal Working Group meeting: Thursday, September 23, 7:30–9 PM. Register here for a Zoom meeting to help us develop strategies to influence our members of Congress and the Biden administration to enact a progressive agenda.
Fight Back Fridays at Senator Feinstein’s Office: Friday, September 24, 5–6 PM. Join a coalition of local Indivisibles every Friday for FIGHT BACK FRIDAYS! We gather each week at 1 Post St. in San Francisco (just outside the Montgomery Street BART exit, in front of Sen. Feinstein’s office building). Rally every Friday until the Freedom To Vote Act is passed! RSVP here.
Women’s March for Our Rights—Reproductive Justice: Saturday, October 2, 11–12:30 PM at Civic Center. As part of a Women’s March Day of Action, our friends at Women’s March San Francisco are co-organizing a march in the city. Stay tuned for our plans for this action and find out more on their webpage.
About this week’s photo
If you’ve seen our newsletter posts on Twitter and Facebook, you might have noticed that we include a photo or graphic with each issue. This week’s graphic is a photo by Sarah Silbiger for Reuters of the exterior of the US Capitol in its news story about the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
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Keep Fighting,
The Indivisible SF Team
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