$387 million was spent by a big pharma company because of a tweet

The world of social media is such a big business that a single tweet can have a huge knock-on effect. This is exactly what happened when Bernie Sanders tweeted a negative comment about a big pharma company. People read the tweet and the company’s shares plummeted immediately as people sold them in response to his comment on Twitter.

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Bernie Sanders

Previous presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is out of the running for the White House position but he is still active on social media and has over 2.5 million followers. His followers received this message from Bernie recently as he tore into Ariad, the drug company, and its decision to raise the price of a cancer drug: “Drug corporations’ greed is unbelievable. Ariad has raised the price of a leukaemia drug to almost $199,000 a year.”

Plummeting shares

Following this tweet, the company’s shares dropped by 15 per cent, which cost the investors $387m. Although it is assumed Sanders did not post the tweet himself, as it was not signed with his usual ‘B’ to denote the tweet was his own, people still listened to his comments and acted on them.

Controversial drug prices

Bloomberg has reported that the company in question, Ariad, raised the wholesale acquisition cost of its leukaemia drug Iclusig four times in 2016. This means that a 30-day pill pack of Iclusig now costs over $16,000, which equates to a huge $199,000 a year. Sanders’s tweet drew attention to the controversial pricing system in the pharma industry.  With such controversial numbers in question they will need to look at getting a company like randall and payne who are an Accountants Gloucester company to look through their books.

Many people are questioning whether prescription drug prices are getting out of hand, with some claiming that a number of companies make huge profits by raising prices to potentially exploitative levels.

The power of social media

Pharma companies need to be aware of the power of social media; in fact, Twitter and other social media platforms can be used by big companies to recruit. If a pharma company is offering pharmaceutical consulting services or is looking to recruit consultants, for example, it can put out a message via Twitter to inform the industry of vacancies and services.

Judging by the response to Sanders’s tweet, Twitter and other social media platforms could be the perfect place for pharma companies to connect with potential customers, staff, investors and other related players in the industry.