Clinton’s tweet on high drug prices sends biotech stocks down

By Drew Armstrong

September 21, 2015 at 08:53 AM

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(Bloomberg) — Biotechnology stocks fell Monday after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted Monday that she would release a plan to combat the high cost of prescription drugs.

The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index fell 3.4 percent to 3,606.07 at 12:16 p.m. in New York, the biggest intraday drop since since Aug. 24, with most of the decline coming after Clinton's comment on Twitter.

"Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous," Clinton tweeted at 10:56 a.m. "Tomorrow I'll lay out a plan to take it on."

Clinton was responding to reports about how Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC had acquired an older antibiotic drug, Daraprim, and raised the price by more than 50-fold.

A drug price plan could be a part of a group health proposals from Clinton, who said Sunday on the television program "Face the Nation" that she had several ideas she would lay out on health care.

"I'm going to address them this week, starting with how we're going to try to control the cost of skyrocketing prescription drugs," she said. "It's something that I hear about wherever I go. It's part of the plan I will be rolling out in the next few days."

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