Hillary Clinton’s prescription to soothe the economic hangover consumers have from ObamaCare’s regulatory binge is a single ingredient: more regulation. Mrs. Clinton begins her treatment plan by focusing on “price gouging” by pharmaceutical companies and the need for price regulation.
Major biotech indexes are down about 20% since Mrs. Clinton first tweeted news of her plan on Sept. 21. What she fails to comprehend is that the high drug prices she decries aren’t the result of market forces gone wild. Rather, they are the result of bad regulation that has created market failures and shortages.
Take Turing Pharmaceuticals, which has come under fire for raising the price of Daraprim, a drug used for decades to treat toxoplasmosis and more recently to treat AIDS and cancer patients, to $750 from $13.50 a tablet. In a Sept. 20 interview, Turing CEO Martin Shkreli said the increase was needed to stay in business and research new medicines. “This drug was doing $5 million in revenue,” he said, “and I don’t think you could find a drug company on this planet that could make money on $5 million of revenue.”
The full text of this article can be found in The Wall Street Journal.
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