While the media and politicians are jumping on the train to crucify the CEO who raised the price of a crucial AIDS medication from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill, Bernie Sanders was investigating the issue long before the media became aware of the problem.
It turns out that Martin Shkreli, the 32-year-old CEO who raised the price of the AIDS drug, is part of a new shoddy and immoral practice of investors buying the rights to older drugs and then raising their prices sharply. This might be news to everyone else, but not Bernie Sanders.
Bernie, along with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), have been vocal about the problem for some time, and have been sending letters demanding more information from companies that do it. Last week, they sent a letter to a company called Valeant, who raised the price of a heart drug more than 500 percent the day it bought the rights to it. Last year, Bernie and Cummings went after the company that raised the price of Doxycycline, a common antibiotic, from $20 a bottle in 2013 to $1,849 by 2014.
Yesterday, Bernie and Cummings sent a letter to Martin Shkreli requesting more information from his company, calling the move “just the latest in a long list of skyrocketing price increases for certain critical medications.”
Ask yourself whether you want a President who is clueless and simply acts outraged when the media exposes an issue, or would you rather have a President who knows about an issue way before the media and has been investigating it?