title:  Bernie Sanders Just Crashed This Greedy Drug Company’s Stock With One Tweet
text: It appears that former Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has tanked a drug company s stock with just one tweet. The tweet was directed towards Ariad Pharmaceuticals. Ariad owns a treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia calledIclusig . Ariad has raised the price of the drug four times in recent history.The last time the raised the price of the drug, it went up 27 percent at a cost of $16,560 dollars a month, or nearly $199,000 a year. The price hike doubled Ariad s sales totals up to $65 million dollars in just one quarter.The tweet that was sent out said: Drug corporations  greed is unbelievable. Ariad has raised the price of a leukemia drug to almost $199,000 a year. Drug corporations' greed is unbelievable. Ariad has raised the price of a leukemia drug to almost $199,000 a year. https://t.co/EB4nEPxP2G  Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 14, 2016The tweet also included a link to an article about the company s continual price increases.Bloomberg reports that after Sanders (or most likely one of his staffers) sent out the tweet, Ariad s stock value dropped by as much as 15 percent   one of the worst days the company has had in more than a year.At of the time this writing, the tweet doesn t appear to have gone viral compared to many of the Senator s other social media postings, with only 1.1k retweets and 1.5k likes. Though that may change as more attention to the story and Sanders  help in making the issue be known grows. Much in the same way that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton s tweet sent stocks crashing in the biotech industry after she spoke out against price gouging.Price-gouging in the pharmaceutical industry is a hot button issue. From Martin  Pharma bro  Shkreli and his raising the price of a certain AIDS medication made by Turing Pharmaceuticals, to Mylan s jacking the price up of EpiPens, people have raised the digital equivalents of torches and pitchforks over these price increases.It s important to keep in mind that this is a problem that is industry wide. One study found that prescription drug prices have been skyrocketing for more than five years. While drug companies that take part in the practice need to be called out and have the screws put on them by the public, the only way this problem is going to end is when people stand up and demand real change in the healthcare industry as a whole. That will probably mean switching to a national health care system   like every other developed nation on the planet.Featured image from Alex Wong/Getty Images with tweet screenshot added