Did you hear the recent tragic news that a pharmaceutical company CEO who bought the rights to a drug immediately jacked up the price 5,000 percent?

Well, guess who just came to the rescue for thousands of patients who were being forced to pay $750, instead of the earlier $13?

A rival drug company CEO who just announced his company would begin to offer the pill for just a dollar.

Martin Shkreli, 32, an American hedge fund manager and founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased the marketing rights to the life-saving drug called Daraprim for $55 million this summer. There were virtually no competing manufacturers for the drug, which is used to treat patients with toxoplasmosis, some cancers, and AIDS, when Turing became the sole supplier in August and raised the price.

Following public outrage over the apparent price-gouging, Imprimis Pharmaceuticals CEO Mark Baum on October 22 announced his company would start selling a competing drug for just a dollar per pill.

Part of Imprimis's mission statement is to battle skyrocketing drug prices in the U.S. and to create compounded drugs at a cheaper price for consumers.

Baum said he would also be looking at the rest of the FDA's 7,800 approved generic drugs on the market and see if they could create cheaper alternatives for others as part of a program called Imprimis Cares.

Imprimis' alternative isn't the exact same drug as Daraprim, but will contain the same active ingredient — pyrimethamine.

"It is indisputable that generic drug prices have soared recently," Baum said in a release from Imprimis. "While we have seen an increase in costs associated with regulatory compliance, recent generic drug price increases have made us concerned and caused us to take positive action to address an opportunity to help a needy patient population."

Doctors are now free to prescribe the Imprimis version for patients — potentially saving them thousands of dollars.

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"Some drug prices are simply out of control and we believe we may be able to help control costs by offering compounded alternatives, which is aligned to our corporate mission of making novel and customizable medicines available to physicians and patients today at accessible prices."

Photo by Bill Brooks, CC – Prescribe Some Good News for Your Friends, Share It…