Disgusted With Sky-High Drug Prices, California Voters Take on Big Pharma

Enormous public frustration with the skyrocketing prices of essential medicines in the US has not yet led to any meaningful reform, writes Fran Quigley in Truthout. But a historic initiative on the November ballot in California, championed by health care and consumer advocates and fiercely opposed by multinational drug corporations, may finally rein in Big Pharma. While many states are considering ways to act to lower drug prices, the most sweeping state-level reform proposal comes from the country’s most populous state, and is the only one that tries to bypass the outsize influence Big Pharma has on elected officials: a California ballot initiative called the Drug Price Relief Act.