Think i myself fell victim to completely misunderstanding your story. I think the average person person who knows your name if they haven't done any extra due diligence on what your story is it's very much assumed that you went to prison and got in trouble with the law. Because of raising a drug price and even there like at first if you google. It there's this drug theraprin.

Which it sounds important but from there then i heard that you went to it because you raised the price of insulin and they were just naming various drugs. So elephant out of the room obviously you got caught doing something that you shouldn't have done. What was that whole story. Yeah.

So i went to jail for fraud. Um. I had a hedge fund uh. Where i managed clients money and those clients thankfully did really well it is still a crime.

If you tell any kind of lie or make any misleading. Statement whatsoever um. Most frauds and ponzi schemes and things like that they end with everybody crying everybody broke you know with no no money left over uh. I made my investors three to five times their money depending on when they invested no investor lost money so.

I'm really proud of that happy that obviously you know it's not a good thing to lie or mislead or do any of that paid my debt to society. It's a big heavy price to pay. I didn't make any money from the hedge fund. So it was really uh painful uh personally.

But i'm at least proud my clients do well so you know there's a bloomberg article. I think the title is probably going to prison. If his clients made money. It was like uh you know it's a good question.

But you know it's still it's still wrong to to mislead or lie. No matter. What you do and i regret the actions. I did you know it's time to move on and grow as a person and do better so i i think a lot of people listening right now and potentially if this is the first time hearing that story like right away.

You're like oh. It's funny because the media painted it as like farmer bro raise the price of drugs going to prison. And like obviously if you read it i hope that they explained it n. Didn't really have to do with that so right there.

I think. It's kind of the first thing where people like oh okay maybe i don't know really what happened here. But if we focus on the thing that got you those negative perturbatives of like saying the most hated man in america. I wrote this down i don't know if you know this but in 2017.

The lown institute gave you an award for the worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare. So i mean let's be honest i've never really won awards in my life and you won one. But it doesn't sound like the best one to win yeah well i think i think people have an emotional reaction to health care. That's that's um doesn't apply to other goods and services and there are no laws that make healthcare goods and services.

Any different from any other goods and services in any industry. Whether it's tech or consumer products or anything like that so the laws of economics. Don't just vanish because it's a healthcare product and if you go to a doctor. And say you need a brain surgery and it's a million dollar brain surgery.

It's going to take a lot of the hospitals resources. It's going to be five surgeons. Three nurses etc. Etc.

You're not going to get the surgery for a million dollars just because you you want it you know at the end of the day pharmaceuticals sort of get a bad rap um. But there is no free service in health care. In general um. There there's money uh in the health care system in every single turn of it and nobody should be surprised that there's money in pharmaceuticals.

I think the big thing that i did that was different from others and i don't regret. It is that i was willing to say that whereas. I think a lot of people sort of are willing to they wanna. They're not willing to do that they wanna hide and obscure the fact that this is a three trillion dollar industry and i've never met a physician who works for free.

I've never met a nurse who works for free. I've never been a hospital that gives away their healthcare. Um to anyone. But the poorest of patients.

I've never met a drug company that says you know we don't want to sell this drug for profit. We're going to give it away um. Every single part of the health care business. Which is what it is is sort of capitalized on by capitalist actors and actually i think that's a good thing.

I think that's what makes it work that's why america has the best health care in the world in my eyes. That's why we have the most amount of drug treatments. The most amount of research. The whole world envies our biotechnology industry.

There is no biotechnology industry in europe. There is no biotechnology industry in china. There's a reason. We're the best of that there's a reason that people come from all over the world to go to memorial.

Sloan kettering or the mayo clinic or places like that because america leads in innovation. And it takes money to lead in innovation. We don't cry about it when it comes to apple uh. We don't cry about it when it comes to microsoft and facebook.

And google. Those companies make a lot of money too and they're very innovative. So when it gets really personal when we think about um pharmaceuticals for some reason. Because or for medicine.

In general um. Because you know we all feel like health care is a human right and it is um. But how we provision that right like how we actually distribute it is something that's complicated. It's difficult especially in a very big country like america.

Where you have 300 million people. You know you have people who are really really wealthy and you have people who are very poor and how do you make sure that everybody sort of gets health care. Obviously the wealthy people take care of themselves. But what do you do about the poor people and the uninsured people and the undocumented people and the people who are just above poverty level.

All those are really tough cases. We know we've tried to solve them right medicaid is for people who have very little income. Medicare's people who are older you know there's a number of you know kind of tools and programs to ameliorate you know difficulty in health care again. It's not that easy.

But the funny thing. I think most people don't know matt is that there are a lot of drugs that are really expensive um. There are million dollar drugs daraprim is around fifty thousand dollars um. So there are drugs 30 40 times more expensive than daraprim and nobody talks about those so like you know if i'm the most hated man in america well what about the other 40 or 50 drugs more expensive than daraprim.

So again. I don't want to talk too much about the past. I'm ready to move on i acknowledge mistakes. I think life is about second chances.

And you know forgiveness and you know i i've made my share of fuck ups in life you know i've made my share of great successes. Too um. I think that dereprim i wouldn't call it a fuck up i think maybe the way i explained it and handled it could have been better. But again.

I also think that i tried to explain and handle it really carefully calmly in great detail. But i think people want a villain like they want that like bad guy like oh yeah. That guy is sort of fun to hate you know um and i gotta admit. It was kind of fun to be that bad guy like it was kind of cool to get attention from you know all kinds of famous people.

Like steve colbert or whatever and kind of go back and forth with him and you know it's funny because this is the first interview. I'm doing publicly. I'm pretty sure uh that was pre scheduled and i've got offers from good morning. America tucker carlson.

You know some of the biggest media outlets in the country. And this is just much easier because i could do it on a webcast. But i think that um you know i really appreciate you taking the time to do this. And you know if anybody like knows.

The media business and anything like that i mean again. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. But to get a fairly top tier interview you know for for your your your sort of uh show. I think is pretty pretty solid sort of get i mean a lot of people i've turned down that are on television and have millions of viewers and things like that so i i truly appreciate it.