Martin Shkreli On Bribing Jurors, Enjoying Prison, Hiking Drugs And More [VIDEO]
Published on Jan 29, 2016
Martin Shkreli is a 32-year-old entrepreneur and company builder. A modern day Horatio Alger story, Martin Shkreli grew up the son of two janitors in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, hustled his way into the hedge fund game, and is now worth at least $45 million. Although he made his money betting against the pharmaceutical industry, Martin Shkreli switched to running a drug companies in 2012.
In August of last year, one of his companies acquired the rights to a drug that treats an infection that effects in people with AIDS and other immunodeficiencies.
Over night, the price per pill raised by more than 5000 percent and Martin Shkreli became the poster child for capitalistic greed.
Martin Shkreli ran with the bad-boy image, flaunting his trollish behaviour in the media, He’s not your typical pharma tycoon anyways. Over the past year he’s also funded an indie record label, claimed he would bail Bobby Shmurda out of jail, and purchased the singular copy of a legendary Wu-Tang Clan album … with no immediate plans to even play it.
In December, Martin Shkreli was indicted on securities fraud charges and is now under investigation by Congress and the Federal Trade Commission for price gouging… so his time in the spotlight is not over yet.
VICE caught up with him at his midtown apartment to meet the man behind the headlines.
READ MORE: Everything I Know About the Wu-Tang Album from Hanging Out with Martin Shkreli – http://bit.ly/1NFBt8p
Full Martin Shkreli video below
Martin Shkreli transcript below
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to hang out with Martin Shkreli became famous in October for raising the price of a drug
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that he’s a treat HIV positive patients by more than 5,000 per cent the drug in
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question is called Derek Prince used to cost thirteen fifty per pill during
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change the cost to a whopping $750 thats price-gouging pure and simple
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orange girlies a Martin Shkreli 32 year old entrepreneur and company builder from
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Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn after increasing the price of Deir prime overnight he
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became the poster child for capitalist agreed
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really ran with the bad boy image wanting Astros behavior in the media is
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not your typical Pharma take you in any way over the past year he’s funded India
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record label claimed to have bill bobich born out of jail and purchased the only
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copy of a legendary will take place with no immediate plans to play in the summer
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Martin Shkreli was indicted on securities fraud charges and is now under investigation
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by both Congress and the Federal Trade Commission for price gouging his time in
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the spotlight
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I caught up with him at his Midtown apartment to meet the man behind the
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headlines
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the fighter it’s a little unfair I walk by here every morning and i were quite
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Pfizer’s world political world headquarters and then I have one lap and
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there they don’t have you know any research going on
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companies cut billions of dollars research and they raised price all the
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time and place on a hundred drugs just last week and nobody read anything about
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it but it’s fun to kind of walk by here and simultaneously see like what I love
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and what I hate of drugs and how they can help people but also hate companies
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that are critical and bloodshed and Pfizer’s good example of something like
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that so not impervious
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no I said please like I’m gonna hate you
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no yeah yeah I know I can see why don’t you might be up here
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right let’s open a really nice well this is a 2005 Magnum ok so we’re going to
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have this maybe play some chess or do whatever you want a single first-rate
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do much but beyond that maybe a little but every time so you play the Sicilian
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defense frequently hear no I don’t even realize okay I don’t understand why
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we’re drinking and I don’t understand the game you’re playing so this is one
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of the more popular doesn’t appear you know how to play chess very well now
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anyway what we want like well I don’t know how you got started in business I
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got interested in stocks as a kid and my grandfather be aware that you know in
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fact I remember the kids making fun of me for caring about stock the stock
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market and I I told them that I did you know that it would someday would matter
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and you know I got more and more inches investments and the time came for media
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to get like a part-time job / internship but I found my way into a hedge fund but
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over time I kind of realized that the show you know the end of the day like is
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that really a career you know predicting the stock price you might as well
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gambling racehorse blackjack or poker i mean it’s it’s such a silly threatening
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your queen so it sort of is sort of silly wins the most important please yes
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so well in any event I kind of went from you know this is kind of ridiculous idea
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that people should sit around and speculate on a stock price like it’s
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something to do
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is absurd and start a drug company while I could do it
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most importantly that I understand medicine and science enough to the point
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where I get started or Company two is very profitable
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people think that you are evil I know you know that are useful in my evil no I
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i think is the opposite of evil right i mean i i think that almost the same
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thing where I wanted to agree to do it like participate in it and say you know
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let me be the bad guy and I started doing funny and fun stuff that that
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maybe even extended the concept of yeah sure all evil villain and the reality is
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you know you’re you’re you’re talking to someone that cares deeply about helping
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people’s lives is the idea that I represent farmers and saying I don’t i
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mean i i dont like most drug companies I think most of them do a bad job I think
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that I’m different list above to make it an even bigger fortune to make on now
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and I can do the expansive of human life we saw drugs for $1 to the government
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but we saw drugs for 750 a pill to Walmart to ExxonMobil to all these big
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companies they pay full price because fuck them why shouldn’t they
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and if I take the money and I’m using it to do research for my kids and my hero
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let alone evil so how did you decide that you wanted to
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to purchase their premise opposed to any other drug to treat severe illness
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well my team you know looks for dogs to buy and I’ve been fascinated by
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infections for a long time my sister was dying of infection and we do know is an
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infection it was just a strange symptomatology where she gonna move was
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really scary and so I’ve always been sort of fascinated by infections because
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they’re alive alive within you and it’s it’s amazing because we need drugs to
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kill these blogs and Ford air from the opportunity presented itself or we could
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you know by this medicine this medicine could have been for sale so we
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approached this company and we underlying so we saw that as an
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opportunity to make money for our shareholders but also then build a
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platform of a company that was focused on rare infractions we knew ahead of
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time that we are you surprised you we paid so much food and medicine roll to
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the amount of money was making though we we knew that we had to raise it wasn’t
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going to be in the company’s all you twist New Delhi claims he’s not hurting
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people
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anyone who suffer from the price hikes its greedy insurance companies that
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critics say that bilking US companies as greedy as they may be announced your
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costs spread out across taxpayers and raise premiums when you do that as a
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cause health care premiums to increase the question i mean so the USS drug
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industry is a five hundred billion dollar industry and one drug even the
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biggest drug in the world can’t can’t influence health care premiums it’s too
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big it’s in fact drugs or only a portion of health care in general so doctors are
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doctors and hospitals are actually bigger than
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drug costs so drug costs about twenty percent of of all health care costs 80
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percent is hospitals and physicians and things like that and drugs really take
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it on the chin as as the meter corporate and no one sort of complains about
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hospitals or doctors raising one of the smallest drugs in the world
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say drug was public information was a five million dollar drug even if that
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went up twenty-fold I could tell you it hasn’t you know it’s a hundred million
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which on a five hundred billion dollar number it’s basically meaningless so to
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me it’s like a little you know I mean my I have a big mouth and and that’s kind
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of the reason a lot of the stuff has happened that’s good for once and but
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you know there are more sense of drugs there are bigger drug price increases
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I’m not the you know and I’m not saying that like there’s a slippery slope was
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saying like one of the worst child abuser or not the worst you know
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domestic violence person that’s not what I’m saying at all you know cause I don’t
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think that’d be an appropriate argument I define what we’ve done I think it’s a
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good thing but at the same time like if you want to think it’s about thing then
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you know you can look at other companies and in fact it is about sixty to seventy
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percent of our patients actually do get it every you can imagine if you extend
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this kind of offer to people take advantage of it and they do you know how
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to run a business like that
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shelley is how did that people who can’t afford AirPrint can contact him and get
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it for free but physicians and hospital systems managers across the country have
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reported that they can’t afford to stop the drug which caused shortages in
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emergency situations sure that you know that your company among others as part
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of its investigation in the Senate Committee on Aging and there have been
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you know people that are representing hospital systems testifying and saying
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that you know their bench shortages at their hospitals in emergency situations
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and they can’t afford to stock the drug beyond just individuals you being able
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to appeal to you personally for free how do you respond to that kind of a an
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issue it’s tricky so before the price increase most hospitals how to bottle
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lying around and they’re able to fill the bottle and and they you know they’re
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they’re sort of because this drug is so rarely used as 5,000 hospitals in the US
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is only a few thousand people get this illness to begin with the most hostile
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action never see anyone with the solace and so if you have to hold the bottle
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just in case another price up I’ll just skyrocketed I would complain too and we
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got all these complaints and we decided to say when we make you a tiny bottle
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that is cheaper will lower the price just for you and that seems to have
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stalled situations where I can tell if you can’t afford my medicine you know
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where to find me online I’ll be on Twitter there’s a way to easily send me
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a message is this you know i cant get this drug the co-pays too high
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help me out Martin you know I I will I will race I will run to help you I’ve
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got nothing better to do you talk about how your company plans and spending a
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lot more than average drug company on research and development he talked about
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political you know what percentage do you plan on using toward research
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involving versus other companies yeah I mean I love R&D we spend about 60
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percent of our revenue and Rd leverage our country spends 15 so for us it’s
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it’s we put all of our action comment rnt we don’t pay dividends we don’t do
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anything or cast and spend it on research and I’m happy you know I don’t
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care for their parents cost more money you know if that’s the price I have to
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pay to to find a new medicine for dying head always even more you know what do I
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care you know Microsoft is lose money wal-mart’s gonna lose money you know why
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we cried about this you know it’s not like there’s there’s people that are
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actually going to suffer from this it’s big fat you know corporations that pay
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health care bills in the United States but the reality is their friends
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dangerous for you if you take care for right now you get very sick and I don’t
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see why that needs to be
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case I think you should be able to take a drug that doesn’t hurt you that’s not
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too much to ask
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and while we’re making all this money whose responsibility is it ours and the
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people invented air permit two years ago didn’t think about that and the
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company’s shame on them who owned it between 1940 and last year when we
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bought it they didn’t care either to improve it for the first time that you
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know what let’s take an honest look at this medicine declining stocks and again
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we’re taking a big gamble like we have no idea
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our second generation drug were the escalating price of drugs new s become
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focused on the 2016 presidential race the consolidation lack of competition
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within the american pharmaceutical business is basically allowed companies
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to charge whatever they wanted most of Europe where public health care than
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norm its government said determine what drugs the cover and at what price you
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know the United States is one of the few countries that are only country that
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doesn’t said drug prices why do you think it’s a good thing I think it
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countries that drug prices that sort of an imaginary concept no country can set
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a target price for companies that showcases what kind of his misunderstood
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I want people to understand is that their companies that have owners their
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owners demand that the extract as much as possible and that’s the rule of law
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today if you don’t like that you know I always tell you that’s the way the world
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works as it went down but I move my can hear you’re in check so this whole game
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is is out but you know what I was so caught again conceded that you want to
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check so I gave in again
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Corp
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Kelly’s wu-tang clan album set him back two million dollars will you wouldn’t
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guess it but it’s casual in an embossed case in his living room the only place
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that it’s ever been spun they called the shower in school with two CDs are school
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it’s cool and no one’s heard that before but one of the shower ones go and what
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is the law school I think like personally like I see the just like I
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see him and me and my server I hope is like sort of the scientists proper type
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of the right now I think it depends on the world you know I think that I could
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see myself in a place where I break it you know and I’ve seriously consider
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that you just open up and bury the remains of it so no one tries to
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reconstructed and then I seen a world where I get away for free
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i’ve seen a world where are charged for it or something like that you know if
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people want to hear it I’ll put it out if people don’t want to hear it they
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don’t appreciate what I think it is that’s 12 so I don’t know everything
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sort of open open-ended I just bought a few months ago and I was arrested a
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month ago so my wife sort of all over the place where knows maybe the feds
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want it civil contingency plan if that happens
