In 1996, Purdue Pharma introduced a new painkiller it said carried a low risk of abuse or addiction. It called the drug “OxyContin.”
In reality, of course, OxyContin was extremely addictive — and Purdue knew it. A decade later, three Purdue executives, and the company itself, pleaded guilty to criminal charges tied to OxyContin’s marketing and agreed to pay more than $600 million in fines.
But the executives dodged prison time, and the prosecution did little to slow the rise of opioid use. The pharmaceutical industry had spent the past 10 years and billions of dollars pushing the medical community to ramp up the use of OxyContin and other opioids. By 2013, the number of annual opioid prescriptions, including short term and multiple, had nearly tripled, topping 200 million — in a country of just over 300 million people.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Elizabeth Warren delivered a blunt message to a large group of wealthy liberal donors Monday, arguing that the Democratic Party’s failure to connect with working and middle-class people had opened the door for Donald Trump to win the presidency.
Warren, according to sources in the room, ran through a litany of issues on which Democrats had left people behind, either by offering too little or nothing at all. Perhaps her most surprising criticism was directed at the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
The Massachusetts senator, who walked in to a standing ovation before she’d even been introduced, told the bereft gathering that she was as capable as any other politician at defending Obamacare and rattled off its benefits ― no more exclusions based on pre-existing conditions, you can stay on your parents’ plan until age 26, 20 million Americans covered. “But let’s be honest: It’s not bold. It’s not transformative,” she added.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says Democrats should have acknowledged the problems with Obamacare and promised to improve it.
Elizabeth Warren is not done with Wells Fargo or its now-former chief executive John Stumpf.
Facing a public outcry over widespread fraud allegations, the bank announced on Wednesday that the 63-year-old Stumpf was retiring. But that’s just the first step, according to the Democratic Massachusetts senator, who ripped Stumpf apart at a Senate hearing in September for his role in the scam.
At the time, Warren called for three things: Stumpf’s ouster; an investigation of the bank by the Justice Department and SEC; and for Stumpf to be forced to give back all the money he made while the scam was ongoing. (While the bank was fined $185 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for five years of misbehavior, it’s still unclear how long the shady practice was going on.)
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Gary Cameron/Reuters
Warren laid into John Stumpf in September when he testified before the Senate Banking Committee.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) announced Monday that they will not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday address to a joint session of Congress.
One day after President Barack Obama said he would veto any new sanctions against Iran, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) invited Netanyahu to make his case to Congress against a nuclear deal. Boehner extended the invitation without first consulting the White House, a move seen by some as disrespectful to Obama. The administration has pushed back on the speech, calling Boehner’s invite a breach of protocol.
“I strongly support Israel, and I remain deeply concerned about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon, which I discussed in detail with Prime Minister Netanyahu when we met in Jerusalem last November,” Warren said in a statement, according to the Boston Globe. “It’s unfortunate that Speaker Boehner’s actions on the eve of a national election in Israel have made Tuesday’s event more political and less helpful for addressing the critical issue of nuclear nonproliferation and the safety of our most important ally in the Middle East.”
Vice President Joe Biden will visit the early caucus state of Iowa next week, stirring speculation once again about the possibility of a presidential run in 2016.
Biden will travel to Des Moines on Thursday to tout the Obama administration’s policies on the economy at Drake University, the White House announced. The vice president will also participate in a roundtable at Des Moines Area Community College, where he will presumably discuss President Barack Obama’s proposal to offer “free” community college to American students.
If Biden, 72, were to be elected president in 2016, he would take office at age 74, making him the oldest person ever to do so. Former President Ronald Reagan, the current record holder, assumed the office at age 69.
Bank regulators got a sense Thursday of how their lives will be slightly different now that Elizabeth Warren sits on a Senate committee overseeing their agencies.
At her first Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, Warren questioned top regulators from the alphabet soup that is the nation’s financial regulatory structure: the FDIC, SEC, OCC, CFPB, CFTC, Fed and Treasury.
The Democratic senator from Massachusetts had a straightforward question for them: When was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial? It was a harder question than it seemed.
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