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Seeking to replenish funding for new scientific research, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) plans to introduce a bill next week that would require drug makers that break the law to send some of their profits to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Drug makers that reach settlements with the federal government for paying kickbacks to doctors, defrauding Medicare or Medicaid or illegally marketing medicines would have to pay 1% of their annual profits for each blockbuster medicine that can be traced to public sector research. Such a penalty would run for five years, which Warren notes is the same amount of time covered under most settlements. (Silverman, 1/22)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) turned her fire from Wall Street to large pharmaceutical companies on Thursday, unveiling a bill to make big drug companies pay into a fund for medical research when they reach a settlement for law-breaking. Warren's bill, the Medical Innovation Act, would require large drug companies that reach a settlement with the government for breaking the law to pay a "small portion" of their profits over five years into a fund for research at the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration. (Sullivan, 1/22)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren took the populist ire she usually reserves for Wall Street banks and directed it Thursday at drug companies that are making billion-dollar profits. Addressing a leading health reform advocacy group, the Massachusetts Democrat lambasted pharmaceutical firms that are “making money by skirting the law” even while relying on taxpayer-supported research to develop blockbuster medications. (Pradhan, 1/22)