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A U.S. Senate committee detailed in an investigative report Wednesday how drug companies were exploiting the market by acquiring decades-old crucial medicines and suddenly raising their prices astronomically.

“We must work to stop the bad actors who are driving up the prices of drugs that they did nothing to develop at the expense of patients just because, as one executive essentially said, ‘because I can,’” said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who chairs the Senate Aging Committee.

Over the last year, the committee investigated four drug companies, which it said had all used a similar business model that included egregious price hikes to maximize profits.

Here are some of the key findings in the committee’s 131-page report on those companies, which included Turing Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin Inc., Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Rodelis Therapeutics.

—The companies raised prices — not to fund research to discover new drugs — but to boost profits for executives and investors. In essence, they operated more like hedge funds than traditional pharmaceutical companies.

Turing, headed by executive Martin Shkreli, bought Daraprim, a 62-year-old medicine […]