, Columnist
Bernie Sanders' Bad Medicine for Drug Prices
The NIH should ignore calls to take Medivation's patent protection.
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Bernie Sanders is worrying millionaires, billionaires and now drug patent holders.
Sanders and 11 other members of Congress sent a letter on Monday supporting an earlier petition to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asking the agency to hold a hearing on exercising its so-called "march-in rights" on the prostate cancer drug Xtandi. A 1980 law lets federal agencies force companies to license patents to other manufacturers in the interest of public health or safety, or if an invention is not available to the public on "reasonable terms." In this case, the idea is to reduce Xtandi's price by breaking a patent-protected monopoly.