The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rejected a campaign donation from Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli, which according to a Thursday report from the Boston Globe, was made to get a meeting so the two can talk about rising drug prices.
Shkreli came under intense scrutiny after his company overnight hiked the price of treatment for a deadly parasitic infection from $13.50 per pill to $750.
In an interview with the Globe, Shkreli said he donated the maximum individual donation of $2,700 to Sanders’ campaign on Sept. 28.
Sanders campaign spokesman Michael Briggs said the campaign will make a $2,700 donation to the Whitman-Walker health clinic in Washington, D.C. “We are not keeping the money from this poster boy for drug company greed,” Briggs told the Globe.
Shkreli called the campaign’s shot “cheap” and that he wanted to help the campaign understand how drug companies set prices.
“I think it’s cheap to use one person’s action as a platform without kind of talking to that person,” Shkreli told the Globe. “He’ll take my money, but he won’t engage with me for five minutes to understand this issue better.”
