California residents, take note: SB 17 would help curb astronomical drug prices by forcing big pharma corporations to notify drug purchasers of any massive drug price hikes or expensive new drugs they're contemplating. SB 17 would also force big pharma corporations to justify the methods they use to set drug prices, and would force health insurance corporations to tell state regulators how much they're spending on drugs. You'd think a liberal state like California could have more nice things, but the health care industry seems to have a death grip on state legislators, as evidenced by the recent scuttling of an Assembly vote on a single-payer health insurance bill (by the Assembly Speaker, who is supposedly a single-payer supporter!), and last year the industry helped kill a bill rather similar to SB 17. But they don't have to worry -- after all, it's not like price-gouging on drugs like Daraprim and EpiPen have been all over the news or anything! CALPIRG helps you tell your California state legislator to help rein in outrageous drug prices by supporting SB 17.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Justice to prevent the proposed AT&T/Time Warner merger, then CREDO still helps you do that. As you know, Comcast withdrew its bid to buy Time Warner's cable operation in 2015, after massive public pressure, but Charter succeeded in buying that operation the following year; now AT&T wants to buy the rest of Time Warner, which includes Warner Brothers, HBO, CNN, and DC Comics. As far as I'm concerned, the argument should really stop at no corporation should ever own another corporation, period, and I suppose professional pedants would tell me that AT&T provides a service and Time Warner provides entertainment so there's no problem! But of course they're both media corporations, and letting AT&T buy Time Warner would give it a longer reach into our wallets, and they'll use their greater power to buy up even more properties. Did I mention that AT&T has enthusiastically helped our government spy on customers? Did I mention that AT&T has announced it'll prioritize its own content if the FCC rolls back net neutrality rules?
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