Earlier this week I told you about a very forward-looking piece of legislation in Washington, D.C. that looks to use open innovation to bring down the price of drugs that treat HIV / AIDS.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I - VT) chaired the Senate subcommittee hearing on the bill yesterday, and it featured some real all-stars in the fields of economics, technology and public health, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard's Lawrence Lessig. 

Sanders himself notes in his introduction that the bill and the open innovation concepts it contains are radical notions to be heard on Capitol Hill and that he doesn't expect the bill to be passed in the coming weeks or months. He goes on to say that these same concepts won't seem so radical in a few years and that this bill is a first step to reaching that future. 

I tend to agree with the Senator's read on this, but then again, we heard the same sort of hedging earlier this year in the Senate about crowdfunding, and three months later the President was signing the JOBS Act into law.

C-SPAN captured the entire hearing, which runs about 90 minutes. You can watch it below: