Dive Brief:
- Among current and former presidential candidates this year, likely Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton has received the most money in campaign donations from employees of pharmaceutical companies, Reuters reports.
- The $240,000 in contributions received by Clinton from industry employees far outpaces the meager $1,700 given to Donald Trump, and even surpasses the combined haul of all Republican candidates combined, Reuters said.
- Clinton has attacked the industry over high prices while campaigning however, singling out Valeant Pharmaceuticals for aggressively raising the price of an injectable migraine treatment.
Dive Insight:
The individual contributions from industry employees are a minor share of Clinton's overall $190 million in fundraising, Reuters notes.
But pharmaceutical companies have also pitched in. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, Clinton has received $633,549 from pharmaceutical companies in the 2015-2016 election cycle, also the highest figure among presidential candidates.
She has proposed an exit tax on companies which move their headquarters out of the U.S. to foreign countries in order to lower their corporate tax rates, suggesting a Clinton administration would likely also be inimical to so-called tax inversions. In a notable recent example, Pfizer and Allergan's planned $160 billion merger was scuppered when the U.S. Treasury issued new tax rules in April.
While Clinton has attacked some companies in the industry, such as Valeant, her positions on international trade and business may be more favorable to the industry.
In December, Clinton also unveiled a plan aimed at finding a cure to Alzheimer's disease by 2025, vowing to boost funding for research at the National Institutes of Health to $2 billion per year for the next decade.