WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 – The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee held a hearing today on exorbitant prices charged by drugmakers for new treatments for hepatitis C, a liver disease that claims about 15,000 lives a year in the United States.

Gilead, the leading manufacturer of the drugs, refused to testify at the hearing about the $84,000 it charges for a 12-week regimen of Sovaldi and the $94,500 price tag for a newer drug, Harvoni. The price per pill is about $1,000 for Sovaldi $1,125 for Harvoni.

Even with bulk-purchase discounts, the Department of Veterans Affairs spent $370 million in the past year on new treatments. Outlays are projected to soar by an additional $1.3 billion for the next two years.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today outlined a progressive economic agenda to reverse a 40-year decline of the American middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else in the United States.

In a Senate floor speech, Sanders detailed measures to create millions of new jobs, raise wages, protect the environment and provide health care for all. He said the most significant question facing the American people is: “Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?”

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today applauded a Vermont Public Service Department request for an investigation into FairPoint Communications telephone service interruptions, including a nearly six-hour lapse in emergency 911 service on Friday.

A FairPoint equipment failure prevented 45 Vermonters from reaching emergency dispatchers at the Montpelier Police Department and the Vermont State Police in Williston, St. Albans and Middlesex. “That is simply unacceptable,” Sanders said. “FairPoint’s history of bankruptcy and poor service should be cause for real concern in terms of the company’s ability to deliver the emergency services Vermonters need, deserve and are paying for.”