POLITICO Pro Warren takes on drug companies at health care conference

Sen. Elizabeth Warren took the populist ire she usually reserves for Wall Street banks and directed it Thursday at drug companies that are making billion-dollar profits.

Addressing a leading health reform advocacy group, the Massachusetts Democrat lambasted pharmaceutical firms that are “making money by skirting the law” even while relying on taxpayer-supported research to develop blockbuster medications.


“It seems that the biggest drug companies are increasingly playing by a different set of rules than everyone else,” Warren said in a 20-minute speech during Families USA’s annual Health Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

Warren is the latest in a string of Democratic heavyweights to speak at the annual meeting of Families USA, one of the strongest supporters of the Affordable Care Act. Many on the left have been pushing Warren to run for president as a more liberal counterpoint to likely 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton.

Clinton herself has been a featured speaker at the Families USA conference. President Barack Obama has attended twice, first as a senator in 2007 and then in 2011 after Obamacare had been signed into law. Vice President Joe Biden spoke last year. Other past headliners include former President Bill Clinton and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Warren, who has made financial reform her signature issue, lauded the Affordable Care Act for reducing the country’s uninsured and providing millions of people access to health care. The improvements over the last few years have been “pretty amazing,” she said. But access is only half of the picture, she continued, calling for legislation that would require law-breaking drug companies to put more money into funding research through NIH.

“Drug companies make great contributions, but so do taxpayers. In other words, we built those medical innovations together,” Warren said to a round of applause from the hundreds of advocates and outreach workers in attendance.

She plans to introduce the bill next week and criticized companies that have withheld safety information about their drugs and given doctors “kickbacks for writing prescriptions.” Between 2007 and 2012, she said, the largest pharmaceutical companies paid more than $13 billion in fines and settlements from violating federal laws.

“We should make it easier for the biggest drug companies to help develop the next generation of cures and harder for them to profit from breaking the law and defrauding taxpayers,” Warren said. “We celebrate the accomplishments of our pharmaceutical industry, because these blockbuster drugs let people live longer, healthier lives. But we are also mindful that these companies did not do it alone.”