Shkreli ticked off the committee members by smiling and smirking, while looking uninterested at all that was going on around him. Schiller and Valeant’s Nancy Retzlaff, chief commercial officer, both said their companies extended financial aid to patients – such as through subsidized copays – in order to eliminate potential financial barriers to accessing the more expensive drugs. She said the company invests in research and development, as well as programs that help patients afford drugs.
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Martin Shkreli was removed from a congressional hearing on Thursday after citing his Fifth Amendment right to stay silent.
Four times, he intoned: “On the advice of counsel, I invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and respectfully decline to answer your question”.
Shkreli’s attorney said the 32-year-old meant no disrespect to the committee by smirking.
‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli has pled the fifth in his appearance before congress today after being called to account for a massive 5000% price gouging on lifesaving medication Daraprim recently acquired by the former Turing Pharaceuticals CEO. “It’s called supply-demand. I got the supply and all you [expletive deleted] with HIV, you got the demand”, he said in one YouTube video from last September.
While refusing to answer lawmakers, he did take to social media to express his views.
South Carolina Representative Terry Gowdy was frustrated by the situation and tried to get Shkreli to talk. “Although Mr. Shkreli followed my advice about making no statements at the hearing, it was very frustrating for him to listen to what he believed to be patently false statements about Turing that he could not respond to because of the pending criminal charges”, he wrote.
“If Elijah Cummings wants to come to my hood, which I wish he would, we can hash it out”, he said.
Shkreli, who is facing unrelated securities fraud charges, stood with others on a panel in being sworn in following the opening comments.
Shkreli records himself on a live stream in his apartment, talking about various topics such as dating websites and the Wu-Tang Clan, whose one copy of one of their albums Shkreli purchased for $2 million.
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The two companies’ executives insisted they were committed to ensuring that cost isn’t a deterrent for patients who need the drugs. And with Washington turning its attention to the upcoming elections, Evans questions whether there is enough political momentum to make those changes. The company, he noted, made $98 million on Daraprim a year ago, and paid manufacturing costs for the drug of only about $1 million.
