SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — It is just 24 days until Election Day, and prescription drug prices are at the center of Proposition 61, one of the many ballot measures you have probably been hearing about.
The measure got a big boost from a former presidential candidate, who was in San Francisco on Saturday.
Bernie Sanders was at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco on Saturday at a rally for Yes on 61, or the California Drug Price Relief Act.
If passed, it would require the state to pay no more for prescription meds than the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Yes on 61 means it would lower the cost of medications by 20 to 24 percent.
During his presidential campaign earlier this year, Sanders often talked about a single-payer healthcare system.
On Saturday, he was fighting against drug prices that have been doubled or even tripled by their makers, not because they had to, he said, but because they could.
“There is medicine out there that could help them, but their patients cannot afford that medicine,” Sanders said. “That is immoral, that is disgraceful, and we’re gonna change that.”
He used some cancer patients as examples of people who couldn’t get the medicine they needed.
Sanders criticized the United States for negotiating drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry, as compared to other countries that put limits on drug price increases.
As a side note, Sanders also endorsed the person who introduced him at the rally.
He said San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim will be a fantastic member of the state senate.