Valeant Chairman Robert A. Ingram, and members of the Board of Directors, please make the prices of your drugs affordable again!!!!!  Mr. Ingram, you received the Martin Luther King Legacy Award for International Service in 2004. As you take charge of Valeant while the former Board Chairman, J Michael Pearson exits in a cloud of shame during ongoing Congressional and criminal investigations for jacking up Valeant prices by astronomical percentages, please demonstrate your character by reading the following, and altering Valeant's trajectory and reputation in a direction befitting your award. My story is only one of thousands with the same core problem: we cannot afford the Valeant drugs which we badly need! My name is Leonore Gordon. I'm a 60-yr old licensed social worker from Brooklyn, N.Y., retired & on Medicare Disability since '08 due to Parkinson's. I need two of your medications, Tasmar and Xyfaxan, and absolutely cannot afford them, and sadly, your Patient Assistance Program excludes those of us receiving Medicare Part D, along with those receiving Veteran's Benefits, and those on HMO plans. I join thousands of people who need your medications but can no longer afford them since you jacked up the prices of so many in the past few years in a newly devised financial scheme to add to your profits. When my Rite Aid pharmacist informed me in early February, 2016, that I'd have to pay $2,259.00 for 45 pills of Tasmar, a Parkinson's medication which helps me move when my other meds won't kick in, I knew something was seriously wrong. When I looked into the generic, Tolcapone, and discovered that even that would cost me 1800.00, and worse, that you'd acquired Oceanside Pharmaceutical, the "generic" company producing it, I was positive that something was WAY off-kilter. As it turned out, something indeed was wrong. When I googled your company in early February, innumerable links to news media popped out at me, informing me that your company was, and still is, under investigation by both houses of Congress and by at least two State Prosecutors' offices for price-fixing, among other multiple distasteful offenses. In fact, a recent article in the Boston Globe about Valeant stated that in 2014 and 2015, according to RX Savings Solutions,  you raised the prices on 147 of your drugs, an average of 76% nearly 33% higher than comparable generics. https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/03/29/valeant-lesson Further research through February and March revealed that your money schemes were blowing up in your face, and that your stocks were crashing along with the reputation of  your company, especially the reputation of your now-outgoing CEO Michael Pearson. In February, Hillary Clinton released an TV ad targeting your company alone as guilty of "predatory price fixing" and pledged "to take you down." I learned that bills had already been proposed in 2015 by Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Elijah Cummings to regulate the cost of prescription drugs, and new bills are being proposed for the same purpose. Astonishingly, Republicans like Congressman Jason Chaffetz and Senator Susan Collins are teaming up on their committees with their Democratic fellows like Senator Clare McCaskill and Senator Leahy in order to investigate Valeant and Turing, and calling your top officers in to question them about your financial investments and choices. Your CFO Mr. Schiller appeared before Chaffetz and his House Committee on Accountability and Government Reform, and while in the hot seat, offered to bring down the prices right away for heart drugs that the NIH couldn't afford to use them for clinical trials. Your outgoing CEO Pearson is expected at the Senate Committee on Aging on April 27th. Most horrifying to me of what I learned about your company was the fact that in the past few years, your company subtracted "Health" from the mission and original concept of Pharmaceutical companies, replacing it with "Profit" as you merrily acquired multiple smaller companies, fired their Research and Development departments (?!!) and then arbitrarily multiplied the previous prices of drugs by four, six, eight, or whatever your revenue goal was for the next year. It was all in the thousands of memos which Congressmen Chaffetz and Cummings ordered your company to turn over at the end of last year. The cautiously good news for the ethical public is that in the face of being caught with your many hands in the proverbial cookie jar, news stories are daily informing us that many of your investors have shrunk away, and that your company has been teetering on the edge of a cliff. Your Board has a few new members, and recently asked CEO Pearson to step down, while issuing press releases that you'd reform and re-examine your past mistakes. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/business/valeant-ackman-pearson-earnings.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share . BUT as the financial world laments the financial losses and errors of Valeant's purchasing and spending strategies, thousands (or more) of us flesh and blood human beings ARE STILL the true casualty of those "mistakes." We REALLY NEEDED AND STILL NEED to take those 147 drugs your former CEO and company raised an average of 76%!!! So, in that spirit, Mr. Ingram, please call upon the consciences of your three new Board members, and the others, and bring down those drug prices immediately, making them available again to those of us who have needed them. The truth is; some of us have spent the past year or two either figuring out a way to do without, or skimping on groceries, or going into debt. When patients can't pay for our meds, our health deteriorates, we begin to require higher levels of care, and the economy suffers. When your prices cost our prescription drug plans $72,000 for a year to pay for one person taking a drug, they raise the cost of our plans, requiring us to pay, as I do, nearly $3,000.00 before they start assisting us in paying for our medications. Please act now, Chairman Ingram and Valeant Board? Lower those jacked-up prices!  It's a Win-Win! You can repair your reputation and we can start to feel better right away. And you can lead those who followed you down that ugly, thorny road into a more financially beneficial future if you bring back "Health" and "Research and Development" as the primary mission of the pharmaceutical industry.