RE: Health Policy Draft for Discussion at 8 am morning meeting

Sorry to come off as overly simplistic, but if you read the first five paragraphs of the WSJ story on Sanders’ plan, the headline is great and those five graphs tell you everything you need to know: drug companies are screwing Americans three ways to Sunday and he’s going to put an end to it. We have a multi-layered plan here that seems to focus on transparency a whole lot more than holding drug companies accountable. Are we going to put an end to them selling their drugs at discount rates in countries where they agree to price controls (see Claritin in Germany for example)? I believe more than 60% of American households have some regular use of prescription drugs, which makes this the most frequent interaction Americans have with the health care system. Not having a big, bold aggressive plan to take on this industry would be missing the mark from my point of view. Why aren’t we calling for an end to tax deductions for direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs and for sampling to docs? They are spending hundreds of millions to goad consumers into asking for drugs from their doctors they shouldn’t get tax breaks for doing it. (I would go further and consider banning TV advertising to consumers, (I know there may be 1st amendment rights; although we do ban cigarette ads). We have to make sure that whatever our plans are here – they are simple, digestible and address a real cost pain point with a clear solution that fixes it. Things like cost shifting to employers/insurers seem less like bold solutions that will bend the cost curve down and ultimately could leave us open to an easy attack from Sanders that “HRC’s plans aren’t bold, don’t change the system of corporate greed in health care and will end up making you pay more one way or another while drug and insurance companies continue to make mass profits at your expense. “ Seems to me that our proposals have to be able to counter that. Joel Hi all - I'm going to join your 8 am call to talk about our proposal to address rising out of pocket health and prescription drug costs, which we'll roll out in Iowa next Tuesday, Sept 22nd (same day that the Kaiser Family Foundation releases their annual survey of employers showing huge increases in last five years on premiums, deductibles and prescription drugs). Please find our policy memo and if you are an earlier riser and love polls you can also dig into the advanced copy of the Kaiser survey which I'm also attaching. Thanks, Ann -- Ann O'Leary Senior Policy Advisor Hillary for America Cell: 510-717-5518