Bernie Sanders thinks the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment needs a bet­ter ROI on its drug R&D

As the US fed­er­al gov­ern­ment doles out $54 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to sup­port med­ical re­search, the gov­ern­ment needs to do more to en­sure that the projects its funds and the med­i­cines it helps de­vel­op are sold at af­ford­able prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chair­man of the pow­er­ful Sen­ate HELP Com­mit­tee, said in a new re­port.

The re­lease of the re­port yes­ter­day co­in­cides with Sanders’ an­nounce­ment that he will op­pose Mon­i­ca Bertag­nol­li, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s NIH nom­i­nee, un­til Biden can come up with a wider, more af­ford­able drug pric­ing plan. But the cri­tique rings some­what hol­low as Biden is the first and on­ly pres­i­dent to sign a law al­low­ing Medicare to be­gin drug price ne­go­ti­a­tions — af­ter more than a decade of ef­fort in that space from De­moc­rats.

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