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 At an Iowa town hall over the weekend, Clinton read from a letter
saying that the list price for 10 vials of migraine drug D.H.E. 45
had increased to more than $14,000 in December, compared with just
over $3,000 in June of 2014.
"This is predatory pricing. It is unjustified. It is wrong," Clinton
said, according to the post.
Officials at Valeant did not immediately respond to requests for
comment.
Shares of Valeant fell nearly 9 percent to close at $86.12 on the
New York Stock Exchange. More than 3 million shares of Valeant
traded in the last hour of trading; total volume on the day was 7.9
mln shares.
 Valeant, based in Canada, has been under pressure since last year as
cracks appeared in its business model of acquiring older drugs,
steeply increasing their U.S. price, and using aggressive methods to
overcome insurer barriers to reimbursing its medicines.
D.H.E. 45, or dihydroergotamine, is a generic, injectable analgesic.
Clinton, fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, and Republican
presidential front-runner Donald Trump have hammered away at drug
costs in recent months, raising investor concerns that future price
cuts could hurt pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
"I'm going after them. We are going to stop this," Clinton said at
the Iowa town hall.
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Trump said earlier this week that Medicare, the government-run
healthcare plan for the elderly, could reap huge savings by
negotiating with drugmakers on price. Medicare by law cannot
directly negotiate drug prices.
A U.S. congressional committee last week subpoenaed former Turing
Pharmaceuticals Chief Executive Officer Martin Shkreli to testify at
a hearing about that company's decision last year to raise by 5,000
percent the price of a decades-old treatment for a rare, but
dangerous, parasitic infection.
(Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Tom Brown and Grant McCool)
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