Hillary Clinton is urging federal regulators to go after an embattled pharma CEO who raised the price of a decades-old medication by 5,000 percent.
The Democratic front-runner wrote to the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission about the anti-parasite drug Daraprim, according to Reuters. The price of the generic drug rose from $13.50 to $750 after Turing Pharmaceuticals, led by 32-year-old former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, acquired the drug in August.
Clinton said in the letters that Turing has not lowered the price of Daraprim, despite promises last month from Shkreli to do so, Reuters said. She wants the FDA to expedite any pending reviews of Daraprim generics so that they reach the market soon, and called for changes in law to ensure similar situations don’t happen again.
A big reason that Shkreli has been able to raise the price of Daraprim is that there is no other generic competition. The drug has been around for decades and only has a few thousand prescriptions. But if generic alternatives reach the market, they can sell Daraprim at a lower price.
Clinton also urged the FTC to look at “price gouging” in the generic drug industry overall and Turing specifically, Reuters said.
The letters are part of a longstanding criticism that Clinton has made against Shkreli. She put out a plan to combat high prescription drug prices, as has her Democratic opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Turing did not return a request for comment.
Shkreli has said on Twitter and in other public comments that any additional funding or profits would go towards creating a new treatment for the parasite. But several doctors have said that they don’t need a new treatment, just a more affordable one.
