Clinton Running Mate Tim Kaine Scrutinized for Private Plane Ride Provided by Teva Subsidiary

July 26, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

WASHINGTON – With the prices of certain prescription drugs drawing the ire of elected officials as well as the voting public, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, the newly-tapped running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton, is coming under scrutiny for accepting transportation from a pharmaceutical company while he was governor of Virginia 10 years ago.
In 2006, Kaine took a trip on a private jet operated by New Jersey-based Barr Pharmaceuticals , which was acquired by Teva two years later, when that company was lobbying him over issues related to its drug sales, the New York Times reported on Sunday. The Times noted that the Barr sponsored trip came at a time when the company was seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for generic versions of insulin and Human Growth Hormone. Kaine signed a letter drafted by Barr in 2006, just a few days before taking the plane ride to the Democratic Governors Association meeting in Aspen, Colo. Kaine disclosed the flight, which he valued at $12,000, the Times reported.

In total, Kaine accepted about $160,000 in gifts from companies and individuals during his tenure as governor and lieutenant governor of Virginia, the Times reported.

The Times article came two days after Kaine was tapped by the Clinton campaign as her vice presidential running mate.

Last year Clinton, the former U.S. Secretary of State, rocked traders when she announced on Twitter her intentions to cap the price of prescription drugs. Her announcement followed Martin Shkreli’s purchase of the 65-year-old toxoplasmosis drug, Daraprim, and increasing its price 5,000 percent. Clinton proposed to cap monthly out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs at $250. Additionally, Clinton’s campaign said she would also seek to curb the amount of money drug companies can spend on advertising. The campaign said part of the plan would also seek to ensure federal regulation through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that would ensure all prescription drug advertisements would provide “clear information to consumers.” Her announcement caused a big dip in the shares of a number of pharmaceutical companies, with the top 20 drugmakers saw their stocks fall an average of 2 percent.

Clinton is certainly not the only candidate to call prescription prices into question. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama penned an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association outlining his healthcare policies and called for a crackdown on pharmaceutical pricing. In his article, the president called for changes to prescription prices through an increase in rebates drug manufactures are required to provide to Medicaid and Medicare, as well as more authority for the federal government to negotiate prices on high-cost drugs, Bloomberg reported. Obama noted a 12 percent increase in prescription drug spending by consumers since 2014.

Negotiating drug prices is something that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has also endorsed in the past, claiming such a maneuver could save up to $300 billion, annually.

Drug companies have historically resisted such calls. Recently several drug companies pooled financial resources in California to fight a proposed prescription price cap plan. Pharmaceutical giants Merck , Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are fighting a ballot initiative that would cap the amount California state agencies pay for prescription drugs. The ballot measure, which will be placed before voters in November, would tie the amount of money state agencies pay for medication to the same amount that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs pays.