Hillary Clinton is launching a round of ads that take credit for a pharmaceutical company’s decision last week to roll back its 4,000 percent price increase of a life-saving drug. The drug, Daraprim, is used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that’s risky for people with weakened immune systems, including people with AIDS and patients undergoing chemotherapy.
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The story of the company’s extreme price increase, driven by a former Wall Street executive-turned-pharmaceutical-CEO, Martin Shkreli, quickly went viral after it was first featured in the New York Times on September 20. Clinton wrote while taking questions on Facebook. So Mr. Shkreli, what’s it going to be? As Clinton has said, too many American families and seniors are being squeezed by these rising drug costs – even as they have seen their wages and incomes grow far too slowly for years.
While Shkreli told several media outlets Tuesday night that the company will reconsider the price hike, he did not specify what the drug’s new cost will be. Do the right thing.
Clinton had previously slammed the former hedgefund manager’s price hike, calling it “bad actors making a fortune off people’s misfortune”, but today’s remarks point to a markedly less forgiving stance from the Democratic pack leader, who, until now, had not called for the drug to be returned to its previous price.
“You have to prove that your medicine is equivalent to the active compound that’s present in the drug”, she said.
“Force drug manufacturers to justify their prices, make sure they add real value”, she wrote. “And – a new idea to chew on – let’s explore using some of these new research funds to invest directly in producing generic competitors where none exists”.
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Clinton’s campaign said the back-and-forth demonstrated that the candidate “is already getting results in her fight to curb prescription drug costs”, according to a statement from her campaign announcing the ad Monday.
