Last year, I asked seven Big Pharma executives under oath about their egregious price inflation and their profiteering.

I asked them how people outside America are paying so much less for identical medication.

The answer, of course, amounted to this: big pharmaceutical companies can charge our citizens more, so they do.

Yes, there's a word for that: price-gouging.

For years and years now, our health has been held hostage by a pharmaceutical industry that puts profits ahead of patients. These massive companies and their financial backers are playing a game of shameful "how high can we get away with" pricing.

Unfortunately, these drug companies have had a key ally these last few years: Donald Trump.

When Trump says that he's going to take a stand on drug pricing, his actions speak far louder than his words. Trump, of course, is a serial liar. But more critically, he's done everything in his power to gut protections under the Affordable Care Act, to take choices and health care away from our seniors.

For the wealthiest drug companies and the biggest insurance companies, Trump is exactly what they're after in a leader: someone who wants to take us back to the days when people can be denied coverage for preexisting conditions, where far too many of our friends and neighbors had to either skip days or cut pills in half to get through the month. In short: Donald Trump wants to take us back to the days when health care was for the healthy and wealthy.

Donald Trump campaigned on the promise that he would lower your drug costs. The sad reality is, that was just one more empty promise from a president that cares more about helping the rich get richer than he does about helping working families.

That's disgraceful. It's obscene, it costs lives, and I'm going to keep fighting it as long until we get runaway pricing under control.

That's just one of the reasons why I'm all in to defeat Trump in November and to take back the Senate—because Oregonians and the American people deserve a president that will stand up to Big Pharma, not enable it.

Ron