Parler back online after tech giants cut it off for a month

SAN FRANCISCO — Parler, the social network that drew millions of Trump supporters before disappearing from the internet, is back online a month after Amazon and other tech giants cut off the company for hosting calls for violence around the time of the Capitol riot.

Getting iced out by the tech giants turned Parler into a cause celebre for conservatives who complained they were being censored, as well as a test case for the openness of the internet. It was unclear if the social network, which had positioned itself as a free speech and lightly moderated site, could survive after it had been blacklisted by the biggest tech companies.

For weeks, it appeared the answer was no. But on Monday, for the first time since Jan. 10, typing parler.com into a web browser returned a page to log into the social network — a move that had required weeks of work by the small company and that had led to the departure of its chief executive.

It was unclear how Parler had figured out how to host its site on computer servers, the central technology underpinning any website. Many of the large webhosting firms had previously rejected it. For other services required to run a large website, Parler relied on help from a Russian firm that once worked for the Russian government and a Seattle firm that once supported a neo-Nazi site.

Parler’s return appeared to be a victory for small companies that challenge the dominance of Big Tech. The company had sought to make its plight about the power of companies like Amazon, which stopped hosting Parler’s website on its computer servers, and Apple and Google, which removed Parler’s mobile app from their app stores.

Parler had become a hub for right-wing conversation over the past year, as millions of people on the far right had flocked to the platform over what they perceived as censorship of conservative voices by Facebook, Twitter and Google. Much of the content on Parler was benign, but for months before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the site also hosted calls for violence, hate speech and misinformation.

Parler had more than 15 million users when it went offline. It is largely financed by Rebekah Mercer, one of the Republican Party’s biggest benefactors.

Fed up with a lack of federal action to lower prescription drug costs, state legislators around the country are pushing bills to penalize drugmakers for unjustified price hikes and to cap payment at muchlower Canadian levels.

These bills, sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats in a half-dozen states, are a response to consumers’ intensified demand for action on drug prices as prospects for solutions from Congress remain highly uncertain.

Eighty-seven percent of Americans favor federal action to lower drug prices, making it the public’s second-highest policy priority, according to a survey released by Politico and Harvard University last month. That concern is propelled by the toll of out-of-pocket costs on Medicare beneficiaries, many of whom pay thousands of dollars a year. Studies show many patients don’t take needed drugs because of the cost.

“States will keep a careful eye on Congress, but they can’t wait,” said Trish Riley, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, which has drafted two model bills on curbing prices that some state lawmakers are using.

Several reports released last month heightened the pressure for action. The Rand Corp. said average list prices in the U.S. for prescription drugs in 2018 were 2.6 times higher than the prices in 32 other developed countries, while brand-name drug prices averaged 3.4 times higher.

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review found that drugmakers raised the list prices for seven widely used expensive drugs in 2019 despite the lack of evidence of substantial clinical improvements. ICER, an independent drug research group, estimated that just those price increases cost U.S. consumers $1.2 billion a year more.

Democratic legislators in Hawaii, Maine and Washington recently introduced bills, based on one of NASHP’s models, that would impose an 80 percent tax on the drug price increases that ICER determines in its annual report are not supported by evidence of improved clinical value.

Under this model, after getting the list of drugs from ICER, states would require the manufacturers of those medicines to report total instate sales of their drugs and the price difference since the previous year. Then the state would assess the tax on the manufacturer. The revenue generated by the tax would be used to fund programs that help consumers afford their medications.

“I’m not looking to gather more tax dollars,” said Democratic Sen. Ned Claxton, the sponsor of the bill in Maine and a retired family physician. “The best outcome would be to have drug companies just sell at a lower price.”

Similarly, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, proposed a penalty on price hikes for a broader range of drugs as part of his new budget proposal, projecting it would haul in $70 million in its first year.

Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Hawaii, Maine, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Rhode Island have filed bills that would set the rates paid by state-run and commercial health plans — excluding Medicaid — for up to 250 of the costliest drugs to rates paid by the four most populous Canadian provinces. That could reduce prices by an average of 75 percent, according to NASHP.

Legislators in other states plan to file similar bills, NASHP’s Riley said.

Drugmakers, which have formidable lobbying power in Washington, D.C., and the states, oppose these efforts.

“The outcomes of these policies would only make it harder for people to get the medicines they need and would threaten the crucial innovation necessary to get us out of a global pandemic,” the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry’s trade group, said in a written statement.

Colorado, Florida and several New England states have passed laws allowing importation of cheaper drugs from Canada, an effort strongly promoted by former President Donald Trump. But those programs are still being developed, and each would need a federal green light.

Bipartisan bills in Congress that would have penalized drugmakers for raising prices above inflation rates and capped out-of-pocket drug costs for enrollees in Medicare Part D drug plans died last year.

“If we waited for Congress, we’d have moss on our backs,” said Washington state Sen. Karen Keiser, a Democrat who sponsored the state’s bill to tax increases in drug prices.

Based on ICER data, two of the drugs that could be targeted for tax penalties under the legislation are Enbrel and Humira, blockbuster products used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune conditions.

Manufacturers say the list price of a drug is irrelevant because insurers and patients pay a significantly lower net price after getting rebates and other discounts.

But many people, especially those who are uninsured, are on Medicare or have high-deductible plans, pay some or all the cost based on the list price.