Bernie Sanders says price hiking pharma execs are murderers
pharmafile | July 29, 2019 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
Bernie Sanders has stood by his claim that those artificially raising the price for insulin are murderers.
Speaking on Saturday in Detroit, Sanders said: “Somebody goes out and shoots somebody, they’re called a murderer. We all agree with that. But what happens if someone runs a pharmaceutical industry and artificially jacks up the price?”
Speaking to CNN the following day Sanders explained: “The cost of insulin has soared in recent years. You have three companies that control over 90% of the insulin market. There are 7 million people that use insulin. One out of four are rationing their insulin. People are dying. There is strong evidence that there is price fixing, that these companies simultaneously raise the prices at outrageous levels far far far more than the price of production. If I have a product that costs me a few dollars to make and I jack up the price and you can’t afford it and you die. What do you call me?”
The Presidential candidate made his position clear in stating: “I can tell you that as President of the United States we’re going to take on the pharmaceutical industry. We’re gonna have an attorney general that is gonna deal with the incredible concentration of ownership and we’re gonna use anti-trust legislation.”
The comments came as Sanders joined patients with diabetes on a trip to Canada in search of cheaper insulin. “I’m going right now in a few minutes into Canada,” Sanders said. “The cost of insulin is one tenth of the price – 10% of the price. Same products that we paying for here in the United States. So you can call the drug company executives whatever you want, but what they are doing involves corruption, in my view that’s price fixing. It involves unbelievable greed. The top ten companies last year made $69 billion in profits. The top three insulin companies made$14 billion in profits.”
Louis Goss
