James and McDonald Rivet collaborate on prescription drug transparency legislation
U.S. Reps. John James (R-Shelby Township) and Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Bay City). Andrew Roth photos.
A bipartisan duo of Michigan members of Congress are working together on legislation to increase transparency in the prescription drug pricing system.
U.S. Reps. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Bay City) and John James (R-Shelby Township) are two of four sponsors on the bill. U.S. Reps. Buddy Carter, a Republican from Georgia, and Rob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, also signed on.
The legislation would require Pharmacy Benefit Managers and others who serve as intermediaries between insurers, drug manufacturers and pharmacies to disclose financial transactions related to prescription drug pricing, including rebates and discounts intended to be passed on to patients.
'With this bill, we're bringing much-needed transparency to how drugs are priced in this country, which will ultimately push prices down and make things easier for consumers,' McDonald Rivet said.
Organizations that fail to report the required information could face fines of up to $100,000 per violation.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which on Thursday announced it would be eliminating about 10,000 full-time jobs and closing half its regional offices, would be responsible for ensuring all reports are publicly available.
'The days of Big Pharma profiting from your pain are over,' James said. 'Americans deserve quality and affordable health care of their choosing. The Prescription Drug Transparency and Affordability Act is a market-based approach that returns the power to you.'
Similar legislation introduced during a previous Congress would save consumers approximately $2.3 billion over 10 years, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
Last year, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joined a bipartisan coalition of 39 attorneys general in urging Congress to reform the current practices of pharmacy benefit managers.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
HBM And Emerging Memory Technologies Enable AI Training And Inference
AI During congressional hearing in the House of Representatives' Energy & Commerce Committee Subcommittee of Communication and Technology, Ronnie Vasishta, Senior VP of telecom at Nvidia said that mobile networks will be called upon to support a new kind of traffic—AI traffic. This AI traffic includes the delivery of AI services to the edge, or inferencing at the edge. Such growth in AI data could reverse the general trend towards lower growth in traffic on mobile networks. Many AI-enabled applications will require mobile connectivity including autonomous vehicles, smart glasses, generative AI services and many other applications. He said that the transmission of this massive increase in data needs to be resilient, fit for purpose, and secure. Supporting this creation of data from AI will require large amount of memory, particularly very high bandwidth memory, such as HBM. This will result in great demand for memory that supports AI applications. Micron announced that it is now shipping HBM4 memory to key customers, these are for early qualification efforts. The Micron HBM4 provides up to 2.0TB/s bandwidth and 24GB capacity per 12-high die stack. The company says that their HBM4 uses its 1-beta DRAM node, advanced through silicon via technologies, and has a highly capable built-in self-test. See image below. Micron HBM4 Memory HBM memory consisting of stacks of DRAM die with massively parallel interconnects to provide high bandwidth are combined GPU's such as those from Nvidia. This memory close to the processor allows training and inference of various AI models. The current generation of HBM memory used in current GPUs use HBM3e memory. At the 2025 March GTC in San Jose, Jensen Huang said that Micron HBM memory was being used in some of their GPU platforms. The manufacturers of HBM memories are SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron with SK Hynix and Samsung providing the majority of supply and with Micron coming in third. SK hynix was the first to announce HBM memory in 2013, which was adopted as an industry standard by JEDEC that same year. Samsung followed in 2016 and in 2020 Micron said that it would create its own HBM memory. All of these companies expect to be shipping HBM4 memories in volume by sometime in 2026. Numen, a company involved in magnetic random access memory applications, recently talked about how traditional memories used in AI applications, such as DRAM and SRAM have limitations in power, bandwidth and storage density. They said that processing performance has skyrocketed by 60,000X over the past 20 years but DRAM bandwidth has improved only 100X, creating a 'memory wall.' The company says that its AI Memory Engine is a highly configurable memory subsystem IP that enables significant improvements in power efficiency, performance, intelligence, and endurance. This is not only for Numem's MRAM-based architecture, but also third-party MRAMs, RRAM, PCRAM, and Flash Memory. Numem said that it has developed next-generation MRAM supporting die densities up to 1GB which can deliver SRAM-class performance with up to 2.5X higher memory density in embedded applications and 100X lower standby power consumption. The company says that its solutions are foundry-ready and production-capable today. Coughlin Associates and Objective Analysis in their Deep Look at New Memories report predict that AI and other memory-intensive applications, including the use of AI inference in embedded devices such as smart watches, hearing aids and other applications are already using MRAM, RRAM and other emerging memory technologies will decrease the costs and increase production of these memories. These memories technologies are already available from major semiconductor foundries. They scale to smaller lithographic scaling that DRAM and SRAM and because they are non-volatile, no refreshes are needed and so they consume less power. As a result, these memories allow more memory capacity and lower power consumption in space and power constrained environments. MRAM and RRAM are also being built into industrial, enterprise and data center applications. The figure below shows our projections for replacement of traditional memories, SRAM, DRAM, NOR and NAND Flash memory by these emerging memories. NOR and SRAM, in particular, for embedded memories are projected to be replaced by these new memories within the next decade as part of a future $100B memory market. Projected replacement of conventional memories with new memories AI will generate increased demand for memory to support training and inference. It will also increase the demand for data over mobile networks. This will drive demand for HBM memory but also increase demand for new emerging memory technologies.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
Lockheed Martin shares sank as much as 7% after a report that the Pentagon is halving F-35 requests for the Air Force
Lockheed Martin shares dropped as much as 7% on Wednesday after news that the Pentagon is asking for half of the F-35s it initially forecast for the Air Force. The defense contractor's shares recovered to $456 at market close, or about 4.2% lower from $476, the price at the end of Tuesday's trading day. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that a procurement document sent to Congress indicated the Defense Department is requesting only 24 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, down from 48 that officials projected in the last fiscal year. Per the outlet, the document also proposed 12 F-35s for the Navy and 11 for the Marine Corps, down from 17 and 13 fighters, respectively. Business Insider could not independently verify Bloomberg's report. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours. The US is by far Lockheed Martin's biggest customer for the F-35, with plans to buy 2,456 of the aircraft over several decades. The Air Force is supposed to eventually receive 1,763 of that total. When asked to comment on a possible reduction of local F-35 purchases this year, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson told BI in a statement that the fighter is "combat proven, offers the most advanced capability and technology, and is the most affordable option to ensure the US and allies remain ahead of emerging threats." "We will continue to work closely with the Administration, Congress, and our customers to deliver this game-changing capability as the budget process continues in the months ahead," the spokesperson added. A reduced ask for F-35s can potentially be changed by Congress, which is still deliberating on official defense funding for the 2025 fiscal year ending on September 30. Lawmakers have shown they're willing to fund the advanced stealth fighter beyond the Pentagon's requests. When the Air Force requested 48 F-35s from Congress last year, it was instead offered money for 51 of the planes. Doubling the requested budget, however, would be a huge jump from that smaller boost. The Pentagon is shifting its budget The reported change could also signify an internal reshaping of the Pentagon's spending priorities under the Trump administration. In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked officials to slash 8% of expenses from existing programs over the next five years so the money could be directed to Trump-favored initiatives. His announcement highlighted 17 categories protected from cuts, and the F-35 was not one of them. All of this comes as those in Trump's circles have publicly criticized the F-35 for its cost and relevance amid the rise of drone warfare. Right-wing commentator Laura Loomer, for example, slammed the F-35 program in April as a "scandal that's been quietly draining our nation's resources." And last month, Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz posted on X that the fighter program was a "$1.7 trillion disaster." While some, like Elon Musk, have suggested that drones make crewed fighters obsolete, the US military says it wants to marry the two concepts instead of abandoning the latter. The Air Force has said combining crewed fighters with drone wingmen is a key priority for the F-47, its next-generation air dominance fighter. Lockheed was in the running to produce that fighter, but lost out to Boeing. However, Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet has said that his firm wants to enhance the F-35 using the tech it created for the failed bid. Taiclet said that plans include automating the sixth-generation fighter and juicing it up to provide most of the capabilities of the F-47 for a fraction of the cost.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
NYC Mayor Eric Adams helps save Trump-linked Bally's casino bid with show of support
Mayor Eric Adams put his chips on the table for Bally's. The City Council voted to advance legislation Wednesday that would allow gaming operator Bally's to convert part of President Trump's former Bronx golf course into a casino — after the mayor intervened to help secure its passage. The proposal — referred to as a home rule message — requires 34 votes from the council for passage without the mayor's backing. But only 26 votes are needed — a simple majority, if the mayor declares his support. At the 11th hour on Wednesday, Adams issued a formal message of support to the council, and the measure passed 32-12, with seven abstaining. It means the bill can now be take up by the state Legislature. If approved, it would allow the golf course property, currently designated as state parkland, to be repurposed as a casino complex. Bally's will then be able to submit a bid for one of three covered downstate state casino licenses later this month. The firm hopes to build a 500,000-square-foot casino on the Bronx site by its golf course — now called Bally's Golf Links at Ferry Point — along with a 500-room hotel with a spa and meeting space, retail shops, a 2,000-seat event center and two parking garages with capacity for up to 4,660 vehicles. The City Council and Albany lawmakers recently approved such land use legislation allowing Mets owner Steve Cohen and Hard Rock to repurpose some of the lots around Citi Field for a casino complex. Cohen's bill got little to no resistance from the council — but Bally's, with its Trump connection, did. As part of the deal to acquire the golf course at Ferry Point in 2023, Bally's agreed to provide the Trump Organization an additional $115 million if it wins a casino license. As The Post previously reported, a council vote on Bally's proposal was postponed two weeks ago — provoking criticism from its CEO Soo Kim, who also fumed that lobbyists for rival bidder Cohen were allegedly whipping up votes against him. Bronx Democrats back the project. But Councilwoman Kristy Marmarato, a Republican whose district includes Bally's Golf Link at Ferry Point, opposes it. Her opposition triggered five of her GOP colleagues — including Council Minority Leader Joanne Ariola — to vote against the project that could benefit the president and his company. During the vote, Marmarato said her constituents opposed the proposed casino and blasted 'outside interference' and 'special interests' lobbying. City Hall insisted the mayor pushed for Bally's to get a fair hearing from the state Gaming Commission with its casino bid, and wasn't putting his thumb on the scale for the gaming operator or Trump. 'Mayor Adams supports a fair process with as many competitive casino bids in New York City as possible, each of which would bring good-paying union jobs and an economic boost to the community,' an Adams spokesman said. 'It does not matter which proposal is selected by the state so long as it's in New York City. We would be supportive of more than one selection in New York City, but that requires more than one competitive proposal.' Bally's applauded the Council's action. 'We appreciate the City Council, including the Speaker and Bronx Delegation in particular, for recognizing the opportunity that this project can afford to the Bronx and the City as a whole. Their actions today allow us to move forward to the next step of making this happen for NYC,' said Christopher Jewett, Bally's senior vice president of corporate development. He said Bally's has been a 'good neighbor' and will continue to work closely with elected officials and residents. Cohen's team declined to comment.
