Mike Bloomberg joins a grow­ing cho­rus of De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates threat­en­ing to go af­ter drug patents

As the may­or of New York City, Mike Bloomberg had a few mod­est ideas about low­er­ing pre­scrip­tion drug prices in the Big Ap­ple that gained lit­tle trac­tion. Now on the cam­paign trail on a faint hope of clinch­ing the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, the bil­lion­aire has some big­ger plans — in­clud­ing one that would al­ter the patent sys­tem cen­tral to the bio­phar­ma busi­ness.

In a bare­bones drug pric­ing plan post­ed on Mon­day, Bloomberg came out blast­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump for fail­ing to de­liv­er his promise to low­er drug prices, and then mak­ing mis­lead­ing claims about them. The price of over 3,000 drugs still in­creased at a rate five times high­er than in­fla­tion in the first six months of 2019, he wrote.

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