The rising costs in medications have been a driving force in reform for the American healthcare system. Debates over healthcare in the U.S. came to a head this fall when Martin Shkreli, the CEO of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, hiked up the price of a prescription medication often used to treat AIDS from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
However, in what seems like karma personified, Vice News reports that KaloBios Pharmaceuticals is now filing for bankruptcy. This comes just two weeks after Shkreli was arrested on fraud charges and suspicion of running a Ponzi scheme as CEO of another biopharmaceutical company, Retrophin.
In their claim, KaloBios disclosed that their assets and liabilities are valued somewhere between $1 million and $10 million.
To put into perspective how low these assets are, consider that in 2014, just the United States’ share of the global pharmaceutical market is valued at an estimated $365 billion.
KaloBios’ Chapter 11 bankruptcy claim came just one day after receiving a delisting letter from the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. This seriously limits their ability to gain capital from investors in the future.
Even though the company itself is also responsible for the increase in pharmaceutical prices, Shkreli has been the main public target. According to Reuters.com, his twitter account was recently hacked after his attempt to use the site to plead his own innocence.
Shkreli had been using both YouTube and Twitter to sway public opinion about his business practices. Apparently, someone was sick of it and decided to take actions into their own hands.
A total of seven tweets were posted by Shkreli’s hacked account, including “Anyone want free money? Willing to donate hundreds of thousands to charities before I go to prison …” and “I am now a god.”
Shkreli is now facing a maximum of 20 years in prison, and from the sounds of it no one will be upset about it.