A billionaire couple is pumping money into the drug pricing debate. Can they loosen pharma’s grip?

John Arnold is legendary for turning contrarian bets into heaps of money. The soft-spoken Texan was a whiz kid trader at Enron before its fall. He then ran his own hedge fund, specializing in energy trading. Before he turned 34, he was a billionaire.

He can afford his prescription drugs.

But Arnold, now a philanthropist with a technocratic bent, has been investing considerable money lately into projects aimed at lowering or rethinking drug prices — a populist cause more often associated with activists and patients than a rich guy who made his name in finance.

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