President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday on promoting competition in the American economy. It launches a government effort to combat growing market power in the U.S. economy by seeking to ensure that markets are competitive. Read more →
Corporations escaped punishment at record levels during President Trump’s last year in office, when federal prosecutions of corporate criminals fell to just 94 – the lowest on record since the government started tracking corporate prosecution statistics in 1996, a Public Citizen report found. Read more →
Opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma has agreed to plead guilty to three criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion. The agreement doesn’t include the criminal release of the company’s executives or owners Read more →
Thirty-three million Medicare beneficiaries will receive a discount card in the mail for $200 that can be used to help pay for prescription drugs, President Trump said Sept. 24. However, a consumer group said Trump’s bizarre announcement is a transparent and pathetic attempt to bribe seniors for their votes. Read more →
In Washington state, the primary election is Tuesday. Last week, I voted on the ballot send to me in the mail, then I took it to the drop box about 10 blocks from my house. I’m a big fan of our state’s vote-by-mail system. Read more →
Unable to come to an agreement with Congress on how to curb rising prescription drug prices, President Donald Trump announced four executive orders last week that he said would lower prescription drug prices to American consumers. Read more →
Big pharmaceutical corporations, including Gilead, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline, have hiked the prices of more than 250 prescription drugs as of Jan. 1. Annual and biannual price increases on medicines have become a standard practice of brand-name pharma corporations. Read more →
As usual, most of the end-of-the-year, round-up articles are about national issues or corporations. If consumers are mentioned, it’s usually about how they’re responding to some corporation. For the most part, it’s been a grim year for consumers. Read more →
Corporations keep breaking the law, and the Department of Justice keeps refusing to prosecute them, a report finds. The DOJ’s refusal to bring criminal prosecutions against big banks, big pharma, and other big businesses has led to a failure to deter repeat offenders. Read more →
Photo: JJBers CVS-Aetna lawyers, consumer advocates, and health care organizations gathered Thursday in Washington, D.C., for oral arguments on whether the Department of Justice’s proposed final judgment in the CVS-Aetna merger is in the public interest. U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which filed a friend of the court brief with... Read more →