A sweeping criminal investigation into possible price collusion between a handful of drug producers has renewed Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Milne’s calls for U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy to return donations he received from drug manufacturer Mylan, which is one of the companies targeted in the investigation.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that the two-year investigation into more than a dozen drug companies could produce charges by the end of the year.
Mylan runs a plant in St. Albans that employs nearly 500, and the facility does not produce the EpiPen, an allergy medication whose skyrocketing cost has become a focal point in the debate over drug pricing.
Leahy has received at least $15,000 from Mylan’s political action committee over the past two years. The PAC’s most recent donation to Leahy’s Green Mountain PAC came on March 14, and was for $1,500.
In one of his first political moves of the campaign, in August, Milne called on Leahy to return the money from Mylan, which had been called out for high EpiPen prices.
In the final days of the campaign, Milne reiterated his demand that Leahy return the drug company’s money.
“I again call on Pat Leahy to return all of these tainted contributions,” Milne said in a statement Thursday. “It is clearly in Vermont and America’s best interests to have a new kind of leadership in the U.S. Senate.”
While Leahy has accepted Mylan donations, he has been critical of Mylan’s pricing policies in recent months.
In an August letter signed by both Leahy and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., lawmakers accused Mylan of engaging in “a well-defined industry tactic to keep costs high through a complex shell game.”
“The EpiPen … has become so exorbitantly expensive that access to this life saving combination product is in jeopardy for many Americans,” the senators wrote. “Mylan’s near monopoly on the epinephrine auto-injector market has allowed you to increase prices well beyond those that are justified by any increase in the costs of manufacturing the EpiPen.”
Leahy has worked for years to lower drug prices. In June, the former Judiciary chairman introduced a bill to combat anticompetitive practices by brand-name drug companies in order to bring cheaper generic drugs to market quicker.
Milne did not say what steps he would take to curb drug prices.
“If I was in the Senate I wouldn’t be there with any Mylan corporate support, I would have a lot more credibility,” Milne said. “If Leahy has worked hard to make generic drug prices cheaper he’s not very good at his job.”
Leahy campaign spokesman Jay Tilton repeated that the donations from Mylan would not be returned.
“The Milne campaign has taken the art of recycling negative trash to a new level,” Tilton said in a statement. “They are going out as they came in: negative, negative , negative. Vermonters deserve better.”
Tilton said the senior senator has racked up the most endorsements ahead of Election Day.
On Wednesday Leahy got the backing of two environmental groups, the Vermont League of Conservation Voters and the Vermont Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Leahy has also received endorsements from the Burlington Free Press as well as the Rutland Herald and the Times Argus, who share an editorial board.
“In these contentious times, especially, Vermont will be better served by a senator who understands the legislative process and has the relationships to navigate the increasingly divided Senate,” the Free Press editorial board wrote.
