Alex Menendez via AP
The ideas that Hillary Clinton has offered in her campaign respond to people's needs but not to their anger. Americans are angry because they see the game of life as rigged, full of rules they never agreed to and that never favor them. They don't just want to be helped-in fact, many do not seek help at all. They want justice and fairness: rules that will give them their due, protect their freedoms, and let them help themselves. Here are six initiatives, consistent with other Clinton commitments, that advance fairness. They should become part of her plan.
Health Care
1. Require drug companies to price drugs in the United States no higher than in other rich countries.
Americans should not have to pay more than Canadians, Germans, or Japanese for drugs that often exist only because of research funded by the National Institutes of Health and paid for by American taxpayers. Require drug companies to charge American consumers no more than the lowest price they charge for the drug in the world's 25 most developed economies.
2. End drug price gouging.
When Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the drug Daraprim this summer and raised its price to $750 a pill from $13.50, consumers were deservedly outraged, and those whose health depended on Daraprim were desperate. But this was Turing's business model-and it worked. Turing's share prices and its CEO's salary skyrocketed. When EpiPen hiked the price of its lifesaving device to more than $600, the outrage was similar. Yet the EpiPen price increases, like Turing's, were perfectly legal. They shouldn't be. Bar drug companies from raising the price of drugs (or devices) they purchase by more than the rate of inflation, taking as the base price, the price charged consumers a year before the sale. When companies have developed drugs and devices through their own research and development, rules should be initially more generous. But once a company-developed drug has secured substantial market penetration, increasing costs beyond inflation should be forbidden.
3. Cap hospital charges to individuals who are uninsured or getting treated out-of-network.
If you don't have insurance or are being treated out of network, you may be charged five or ten times what an insurance company pays for the same procedure.
A $1,200 operation for Blue Cross becomes an $8,000 operation for Joe Jones or Sally Smith. Require hospitals to charge individuals in these circumstances no more than they charge the lowest paying insurance company for the same procedure.
Basic Fairness
4. End mandatory arbitration in contracts that companies impose on workers and consumers.
The Seventh Amendment gives Americans the right to a jury trial in civil cases. Consumers and workers are increasingly denied this right because they can acquire neither goods nor jobs without agreeing to arbitration or complying with other company-determined dispute resolution procedures. The forums they are forced into are seldom unbiased. The law should ensure that no one is forced to forego the right to a judicial remedy because of mandatory arbitration clauses or other required dispute resolution procedures in company-dictated, take-it-or-leave-it contracts.
Bankruptcy
5. Put Workers and Consumers First
Companies have been using bankruptcy law to void promised pensions, to deny workers payments they have earned, and to leave consumers with no remedies for shoddy products or injuries suffered by their actions. Often it is not because they lack the money to pay these claims. Rather, it is because when a company declares bankruptcy, banks and other creditors are first in line for compensation. In recent coal company bankruptcies, for example, miners' pension rights are disappearing because lenders' claims come first. Fairness demands the reverse. Small business contractors, harmed consumers, unpaid workers, and worker pension funds should be first in line for compensation, with banks and other creditors to follow. A side benefit would be that banks would do more to ensure that their borrowers did not spend money on stock buybacks and high executive pay if they knew they were likely to suffer most from companies run into the ground.
6. Treat Students Fairly
Students who owe for their education should be eligible for the fresh start that bankruptcy allows. Care must be taken to ensure that bankruptcy laws are not abused by people irresponsibly seeking to shed educational debt, but when defaulting on a student loan is due to serious illness, disabilities acquired later in life, or years of searching for and being unable to find living wage work, student loan debts, like other debts, should be dischargeable in bankruptcy. Existing law does allow students to discharge educational debts when repaying them would cause "undue hardship," but bankruptcy judges are reluctant to find that undue hardship exists. Small changes should nudge judges toward greater fairness.
And Take Credit That's Due
The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), established under the Dodd-Frank law, has in its brief existence returned billions of dollars to harmed consumers. It compelled the telemarketing firm Morgan Drexen to pay $132 million in restitution to consumers victimized by its violations, and it secured from Ally Financial $98 million in fines and settlement fees for discriminating against minority auto loan applicants. Recently, the CFPB has been in the news for the $100 million fine it secured against Wells Fargo for opening more than two million unauthorized accounts and sometimes sticking consumers with fees. Despite (or because of) results like these, eliminating the CFPB has been a top Republican hit-list item since its inception. If Trump and a Republican Congress are elected, the CFPB will be lost. Clinton should point to the CFPB as an example of what government can do when it rewrites the rules in the public's favor-and what Americans stand to lose if the Republicans win.
