Hillary Clinton is walking the line between being remarkably successful and yet still in touch with the lives of ordinary people. The former secretary of state and potential 2016 presidential candidate has found herself trying to limit blowback to her claim that she and husband Bill were "dead broke" when they left the White House. She made the comment during an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer. Sawyer pressed Clinton on a reported haul of $5 million in speaking fees. "You have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," Clinton said. "We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea's education. It was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard." Republicans called the claim laughable and the next day Clinton clarified, again on ABC, that she and Bill had done very well over the past 14 years. "We have a life experience that is clearly different in very dramatic ways from many Americans," Clinton said.

"But we also have gone through some of the same challenges many people have." We wanted to take a closer look at Clinton’s claim of being "dead broke" when their time in the White House ended after December 2000. Clinton’s 2000 Senate financial disclosure form, via the Open Secrets website, provides a rough view of the balance between the couple’s assets and liabilities. These forms only show amounts in broad ranges -- from $15,001 to $50,000, from $50,001 to $100,000 and so forth -- but under any set of assumptions, the Clintons were in the red, a problem driven by Bill Clinton’s enormous legal bills. Their highest possible assets totaled about $1.8 million, while their lowest possible debts were nearly $2.3 million. The most optimistic scenario left them in a hole of about $500,000. But the federal disclosure form does not include homes used for personal use and the Clintons owned two. In 1999, they bought a five-bedroom home in Chappaqua, N.Y., for $1.7 million.

In December 2000, just as they were leaving the White House, they bought a seven-bedroom house near Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. The price was $2.85 million. While those homes had mortgages, which would increase the amount of the Clintons' debt, the family also had equity in them. The New York Times reported that the Clintons put $855,000 down on the Washington house, for instance. Houses For Sale In Tasmania Road IpswichThat equity would have covered the low-end debt estimate of about $500,000.Nilfisk Vacuum Cleaner Parts Point being: Clinton’s 2000 disclosure doesn’t prove the Clintons’ liabilities exceeded their assets when they left the White House.Hot Tubs Broadway San Francisco We reached out to Hillary Clinton’s office for more details and did not hear back.

All this begs the question of whether someone who can afford to buy a $2.85 million house is "dead broke." We reached two accounting professors at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, one of the top-ranked schools in the country. Assistant Professor Jeffrey Hoopes said to call the Clintons dead broke would be a stretch for how the term is commonly understood. "Almost any president leaving office can expect tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of future earnings as a result of their having been president," Hoopes said. "Speaking, consulting, board positions, and so on, are all very lucrative." Professor Brian Mittendorf said a balance sheet of assets and liabilities simply doesn’t paint a complete picture. Mittendorf compared the Clintons to a medical school graduate saddled with huge debts but with the prospect of a very hefty income down the line. "While one can claim to be technically broke, creditors wouldn't take it as such as long as future income streams could cover the liabilities," Mittendorf said.

In December 2000, at least one large bank saw the Clintons through that lens. Whatever their balance sheet might have been, Citibank lent them $1.995 million to buy that house in Washington, D.C. This was a safe loan. By Feb. 5, 2001, Bill Clinton was commanding regular speaking fees of $125,000 or more. Hillary Clinton herself did quite well in 2001. The book publisher Simon and Schuster paid her $2.84 million in royalties. By 2004, the Clintons had erased their debts and Hillary Clinton was ranked the 10th-wealthiest member of the Senate, with a net worth between $10 million and $50 million. Hillary Clinton said she and Bill were in debt and dead broke when they left the White House. The public record shows that they possibly had more liabilities than assets, but it doesn’t show that conclusively. More important, a balance sheet does not tell the full story and the experts we reached said the Clintons’ earning potential had a real economic value that the financial sector traditionally acknowledges and is willing to bank on.

A few weeks before they left the White House, the Clintons were able to muster a cash down payment of $855,000 and secure a $1.995 million mortgage. This hardly fits the common meaning of "dead broke." We rate the claim Mostly False.On Thursday, amid mounting pressure from the public and politicians alike, the drug company that makes EpiPens finally promised to do something about their often astronomical price. With 118,000 signatures asking Congress to "stop the EpiPen price gouging" and everyone from Hillary Clinton to Sarah Jessica Parker weighing in, drug maker Mylan has said it will reduce the cost for some users. SEE ALSO: Why are EpiPens so expensive, and why is everyone so mad about it? The company is creating a savings card for the EpiPen 2-Pak that will cover up to $300 of the $609 cost (which is up from less than $100 in 2007). It's a small gesture that doesn't address the price of the drug itself, which is often paid by the insurer and reflected in premiums.

It also won't help many users, including anyone without insurance, or anyone in government-funded or federal health care programs. However, it's a step in the right direction and a symbolic victory for a grassroots campaign that has harnessed the power of social media to force the issue. A epinephrine auto injector is used to deliver a measured does of epinephrine most frequently to treat an allergic reaction to help prevent or avoid anaphylactic shock.Image: APAP Photo/Jon ElswickThe price of an EpiPen has grown gradually but surely over the last few years. The device, which administers a single dose of the hormone epinephrine to treat potentially life threatening anaphylactic shocks, uses a patented dosage system. It means the user gets exactly the right amount of epinephrine and the patent has prevented any other drug companies from bringing similar products to market. That lack of competition — along with aggressive marketing and awareness campaigns over the years — has ensured that Mylan has a large and committed user base.

As the price has increased, by between 10 percent and 15 percent most years, the cost has often been absorbed by insurance companies. However, changes in deductible and copay levels have recently passed more of that onto the consumer. A new school year has also meant more parents looking to get EpiPens for their children with allergies. The result: a lot more people having the sky high cost of the product brought home to them with a bang. And they took to social media to express their anger and frustration. What began small — parents sharing tales of woe, unhappy customers comparing ludicrous prices — started to snowball and eventually attracted the attention of social media users with bigger profiles. Robyn O'Brien, a prominent parent activist with some 38,000 followers on Facebook, started documenting some of the stories: a parent that wept at the pharmacy counter; a single mom that claimed she faced a $925 bill; another that paid $1600 for two packs. The stories she read in comments and re-posted struck a chord, as did photos of the bills people were facing, prompting further stories and photos.

People began to realize they were far from alone and their anger was shared. "There was so much heartache in the stories." "There was so much heartache in the stories," O'Brien told Mashable. "Parents are confronted with unfathomable choices: paying rent or buying the EpiPen; mortgage payment or EpiPen; back-to-school supplies for all of their children or EpiPen. And if they have more than one person in the family with allergies, it is crippling." There was a hashtag as more and more anecdotes surfaced. Of course there was. And of course it was #epigate. O'Brien told Mashable that social media played a vital role in bringing the EpiPen issue to the public's consciousness. "Facebook pulled back the curtain on the issue," she said. "Social media platforms are incredibly powerful tools for food allergy families to connect and share resources, success strategies, what to avoid. There are private groups full of tens of thousands of members." Her call for stories and photos prompted a "flood" that told the story, she said.

"It empowered so many. Many said 'I thought I was the only one.'" "Facebook pulled back the curtain on the issue." "When parents began reaching out, particularly a mother who’d lost her 14 year old to an allergic reaction, we knew we had to take brave action," she added. Brooklyn-based actress Mellini Kantayya was among those posting about her anger. She took it one step further, though, and went on to create the petition that's received so much interest. She told reporters “it just felt nefarious” that the company was hiking the price and expressed her disgust on Facebook with the caption "Stupid pharmaceutical company!" O'Brien and other prominent activists directed their readers to the petition. Before long politicians were taking notice. Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, who has a daughter with allergies who carries an EpiPen, was one of several demanding answers. She asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate whether Mylan has violated antitrust laws with their price increases and drew attention to the issue on Facebook.

In a post to her followers that's had 13,000 reactions, she said: "One drug company shouldn't control the price of a life-saving product prescribed 3.6 million times last year. This should be immediately investigated and stopped." Among the 1,600 comments on the post were hundreds more stories of real people struggling to afford the cost of the drug. Klobuchar also told Mashable that social media played a vital role in raising awareness of the issue. “One of the first places I heard about the EpiPen price increase was on Twitter, from concerned constituents," she said. "And then the first place I went to call for action was Facebook, where my post was shared more than 5,000 times." "Thousands of people have reached out on Facebook and Twitter to share their stories about the impact of prescription drug price increases. And all of that made a difference. In less than a week, Mylan announced it would expand its EpiPen patient assistance programs. We need to keep up the pressure — both online and on the Hill — to help protect American consumers from the rising prices of prescription drugs.”

While the clamor for intervention grew, most of the patient advocacy groups were silent. As the New York Times pointed out, some of them, including Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) and the Allergy & Asthma Network, have partnerships with Mylan for patient awareness campaigns. They are believed to receive money from the drug manufacturer although the figures are not known. This uprising, then, was squarely fought by the parents and relatives of EpiPen users on the battlefield of social media. Glad Mylan will cut cost of EpiPen but can't rely on public outcry as solution to high prescription prices. I'm fighting for real solutions. — Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) August 25, 2016 By Wednesday, the momentum was unstoppable. Hillary Clinton publicly waded in, saying the company's "outrageous" behavior was "just the latest troubling example of a company taking advantage of its consumers." EpiPens can be the difference between life and death. There's no justification for these price hikes.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 24, 2016 Sarah Jessica Parker, meanwhile, ended her relationship with Mylan Thursday. "I hope they will seriously consider the outpourings of voices of those millions of people who are dependent on the device, and take swift action to lower the cost," she wrote on Instagram. A photo posted by SJP (@sarahjessicaparker) on Aug 25, 2016 at 4:02am PDT Of course this wouldn't be a pharma outrage story without Martin Shkreli, who famously hiked the price of toxoplasmosis treatment Daraprim wildly in 2015, wading in. He initially said that "these guys are really vultures," asking, "what drives this company's moral compass?" He later defended Mylan, though, telling reporters that "the fault lies in the insurance companies." "The second $MYL has a decent 'hit' for a product we all go nuts," he complained on Twitter, referring to Mylan by its stock market acronym. "Can't someone succeed and not be shamed anymore." He also jokily offered to testify in the case, saying he had "a lot of insight and some potential solutions for these issues."

So the second $MYL has a decent "hit" for a product, we all go nuts. Can't someone succeed and not be shamed anymore? — Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) August 25, 2016 any chance i can come through this time and actually testify? Shkreli told Mashable over email his "vulture" comment had been taken out of context but declined to elaborate. The power of the social web didn't stop there. Many people weren't waiting around for Mylan to drop the price to an acceptable level and started sharing ways around paying the price. A hugely popular Imgur post, for example, detailed how one person has been buying the product from New Zealand — shipping free — for $121.69. On eBay, meanwhile, EpiPens flooded the site. The postings weren't exactly altruistic, but they were often cheaper than the market price. The next target for some collective social media ire and action could be insulin, the price of which reportedly rocketed from $231 per patient in 2002 to $736 in 2013.