5,000% Price Increase For Daraprim

[Newell Steamer]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...s-complication-aids-cancer-daraprim/32563749/

A drug treating a common parasite that attacks people with weakened immune systems increased in cost 5,000% to $750 per pill.

At a time of heightened attention to the rising cost of prescription drugs, doctors who treat patients with AIDS and cancer are denouncing the new cost to treat a condition that can be life-threatening.

Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill last month, shortly after purchasing the rights to the drug from Impax Laboratories. Turing has exclusive rights to market Daraprim (pyrimethamine), on the market since 1953.

I wonder where all that money will go?

Rothenberg defended Daraprim's price, saying that the company will use the money it makes from sales to further research treatments for toxoplasmosis. They also plan to invest in marketing and education tools to make people more aware of the disease.

“There has been no innovation in dealing with toxoplasmosis,” Rothenberg said. “That has been a long neglect in the patient community.”

Wait - I thought drugs were so expensive when released, to make up for the R&D to create them. Now, the price for R&D is to be paid for upfront?

Bull.

Because there is no way they will release whatever supposed innovative new drug at a low price.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...s-complication-aids-cancer-daraprim/32563749/



I wonder where all that money will go?



Wait - I thought drugs were so expensive when released, to make up for the R&D to create them. Now, the price for R&D is to be paid for upfront?

Bull.

Because there is no way they will release whatever supposed innovative new drug at a low price.

You aren't going to find me sympathizing with drug companies.

First and foremost, I find it barbaric that our fucking insurance companies can decline what a doctor prescribes you and say "No... no, you don't need that". It's ludicrous. A qualified doctor has prescribed a medication is vital to my health/recovery and you are declining covering it? These are the types of things I though insurance was for.

I'm someone that has to take expensive epilepsy medication every day or I risk a seizure while driving. It's insane the costs of some of the drugs I have to try.

By the way, finding the perfect cocktail mix of epilepsy medication has been a fun struggle for me for quite some time. Yay for $800 medications. At least my insurance covers it for now.

 

[bozack]

you're right they won't because something always has to be in the pipeline, and if there is nothing the companies will do whatever they can to maximize profits to either fund research or acquire another company with something early stage that looks promising. Without government involvement new and orphan drugs will always be expensive, and if the government does intervene then we will see an even further decline in R&D leading to less breakthrough medicines, as it is much of the early stage work is either being done by small companies just hoping to get bought out, or has already been outsourced with chemists in India and China churning out hundreds of compounds a day and only smaller teams here review them for efficacy and move them forward.

 

[Sonikku]

A drug treating a common parasite that attacks people with weakened immune systems increased in cost 5,000% to $750 per pill.

At a time of heightened attention to the rising cost of prescription drugs, doctors who treat patients with AIDS and cancer are denouncing the new cost to treat a condition that can be life-threatening.

Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill last month, shortly after purchasing the rights to the drug from Impax Laboratories. Turing has exclusive rights to market Daraprim (pyrimethamine), on the market since 1953.

If you have aids or cancer, what are you gonna do? Not take it? Medicare has been hamstrung from negotiating prices for drugs as well.

Welcome to America.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

you're right they won't because something always has to be in the pipeline, and if there is nothing the companies will do whatever they can to maximize profits to either fund research or acquire another company with something early stage that looks promising. Without government involvement new and orphan drugs will always be expensive, and if the government does intervene then we will see an even further decline in R&D leading to less breakthrough medicines, as it is much of the early stage work is either being done by small companies just hoping to get bought out, or has already been outsourced with chemists in India and China churning out hundreds of compounds a day and only smaller teams here review them for efficacy and move them forward.

I get your point, but our patent system is a little out of whack. They have 50 years to deleted you on the price of a drug before competition can swoop in.

What if they made the patent (specifically for drugs) be good for only, say, 5 years. That is 5 years you can milk your profits dry on helpless people. After that, generics can swoop in and take a piece.

What does that do? It gives drive to keep being within those 5 year intervals (hence, R&D for the next drug). When you have a 50 year patent, you can milk that teet dry, and when those 50 years are up pay generic companies a few hundred mill to keep their generic equivalent from coming out for another 20 years.

Please leave the bigotry at home.
admin allisolm

 

[alcoholbob]

I very much doubt much of that money will be going towards research. Regardless, it means people will be forced to the black market/grey market goods for their needs, like your typical Soviet citizen

 

[Jaskalas]

Are we certain this is not based on shortages?

 

[Jhhnn]

The founder & CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York-

http://www.biospace.com/News/ousted-retrophin-ceo-martin-shkreli-launches/366027

Just another Job Creator! with America's best interests at heart.

You betcha.

 

[bozack]

I get your point, but our patent system is a little out of whack. They have 50 years to *** you on the price of a drug before competition can swoop in.

What if they made the patent (specifically for drugs) be good for only, say, 5 years. That is 5 years you can milk your profits dry on helpless people. After that, generics can swoop in and take a piece.

What does that do? It gives drive to keep being within those 5 year intervals (hence, R&D for the next drug). When you have a 50 year patent, you can milk that teet dry, and when those 50 years are up pay generic companies a few hundred mill to keep their generic equivalent from coming out for another 20 years.

Even with the amount of time they give on Patents it still "isn't enough"

These companies are put under a fine microscope when they get large enough to actually start churning out a drug that is effective and profitable, which is why you see so many of them just stop innovating when they get large and instead look to acquire more agile companies working on something that looks promising.

And generics are a mixed bag, for the most part they are good, but they are only the same in supposedly all things which "matter" from a composition standpoint, they don't use all of the same materials, and for some aren't as effective as the name brand, plus the generic manufacturers don't have to put up anything even remotely close to what the companies do which develop the drugs be in it in resources, expense, or government oversight/review

It would be nice to think companies would pour tons of money into R&D and work on razor thin margins so folks could get price reductions on drugs, or that if we regulated the crap out of them that agencies like NIH would pick up the slack but that is a pipe dream...

Pharmaceuticals will do whatever it takes to keep their product under patent and the price as high as they can get away with as once it goes generic and if they don't have anything new in the pipeline they are on borrowed time....and much of R&D is a crap shoot.

Most companies will provide their drugs for free to those who truly need them, but for those who can pay, they will.

 

[kage69]

A private company subjecting sick people to blatant wallet sodomy, hrmmmm. Clearly Obama is to blame here.

 

[alcoholbob]

A private company subjecting sick people to blatant wallet sodomy, hrmmmm. Clearly Obama is to blame here.

You should write to the White House your concerns :->

 

[Newbian]

If they can do it why not... capitalism at it's best.

To be fair some of the drug laws like this are insane in how much they can control.

 

[Brian Stirling]

At another time in our nations history they would be called into Congress to explain themselves but those days or gone. The modern climate is governed by Wall Street and whatever they can get away with. The pols in Washington will do nothing because they don't want to annoy there patrons.


Brian

 

[Slew Foot]

Shouldnt this thing be a generic by now anyway? Shouldnt the patent be expired? Just another day in the pharm industry.

Im going to link this thread (and the others like it) the next time someone thinks doctors are overpaid,

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

The great thing about capitalism is that anyone is free to develop a drug that provides the same relief and sell it at less then cost.

Why hasn't anyone in here come up with such a drug yet? Peeps are waiting.

 

[alcoholbob]

The great thing about capitalism is that anyone is free to develop a drug that provides the same relief and sell it at less then cost.

Why hasn't anyone in here come up with such a drug yet? Peeps are waiting.

FDA approval is pretty expensive, the costs for the trials it can often run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If you want to introduce a competing product in the U.S. market you have to consider if you can even break even before your patent expires after the costs of getting FDA approval. There might be competing drugs in the European market that are known to work but don't have FDA approval, and individuals can try to smuggle them into the U.S. but then there's always the risk of customs impound. Plus your website may be taken down by the Feds, and people doing group buys on forums could always get infiltrated by DEA agents so its not exactly risk-free.

 

[senseamp]

Medicare part D needs to be changed so that Medicare can negotiate drug prices again. And the federal government needs to stick anti-trust investigations on these drug companies.

 

[senseamp]

Here is the CEO of the pharma company for public shaming:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli

Basically a hedge fund guy who set up a pharma company to buy this drug and jack up the price. Everything that's wrong with America encapsulated perfectly in one douchebag who looks like Dracula:

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

FDA approval is pretty expensive, the costs for the trials it can often run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If you want to introduce a competing product in the U.S. market you have to consider if you can even break even before your patent expires after the costs of getting FDA approval. There might be competing drugs in the European market that are known to work but don't have FDA approval, and individuals can try to smuggle them into the U.S. but then there's always the risk of customs impound. Plus your website may be taken down by the Feds, and people doing group buys on forums could always get infiltrated by DEA agents so its not exactly risk-free.

Bingo!

And it is precisely why a drug that is targeted at such a small percentage of people is so expensive in the first place. But some people in here want to pretend it is some kind of huge rip-off and seem to believe that this drug can be offered for a pittance.

It stinks that those with rare diseases have to pay exorbitant funds to stay alive, but that's the way it is. Life sucks for those with special needs and there is no way around it.

 

[Jaskalas]

FDA approval is pretty expensive, the costs for the trials it can often run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If you want to introduce a competing product in the U.S. market you have to consider if you can even break even before your patent expires after the costs of getting FDA approval. There might be competing drugs in the European market that are known to work but don't have FDA approval, and individuals can try to smuggle them into the U.S. but then there's always the risk of customs impound. Plus your website may be taken down by the Feds, and people doing group buys on forums could always get infiltrated by DEA agents so its not exactly risk-free.

Essentially a government enforced monopoly.

 

[senseamp]

Bingo!

And it is precisely why a drug that is targeted at such a small percentage of people is so expensive in the first place. But some people in here want to pretend it is some kind of huge rip-off and seem to believe that this drug can be offered for a pittance.

It stinks that those with rare diseases have to pay exorbitant funds to stay alive, but that's the way it is. Life sucks for those with special needs and there is no way around it.

You are a sucker if you believe that.
This is a choice we made as a society to allow this to happen, not some fact of life. This exact pill was being sold for 50 times less before a hedge fund parading as a drug company bought the manufacturer. And the only reason they were able to jack up the price is because we allow them to. Not because the pill wouldn't exist if the price wasn't jacked up. It existed just fine for many years at the old price. Only because pharma has duped folks like you into thinking that this is the way things have to be do they get away with it in the first place.

 

[MagickMan]

Here is the CEO of the pharma company for public shaming:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli

Basically a hedge fund guy who set up a pharma company to buy this drug and jack up the price. Everything that's wrong with America encapsulated perfectly in one douchebag who looks like Dracula:

Since he lives in Monaco now, I'm not sure how a "public shaming" here is going to do anything. But sure, direct your social justice upon him, maybe his League of Legends team will give him a ribbing over it.

 

[DrDoug]

I get your point, but our patent system is a little out of whack. They have 50 years to*** you on the price of a drug before competition can swoop in.

What if they made the patent (specifically for drugs) be good for only, say, 5 years. That is 5 years you can milk your profits dry on helpless people. After that, generics can swoop in and take a piece.

What does that do? It gives drive to keep being within those 5 year intervals (hence, R&D for the next drug). When you have a 50 year patent, you can milk that teet dry, and when those 50 years are up pay generic companies a few hundred mill to keep their generic equivalent from coming out for another 20 years.

Interesting choice of words you use there. Care to explain?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

You are a sucker if you believe that.
This is a choice we made as a society to allow this to happen, not some fact of life. This exact pill was being sold for 50 times less before a hedge fund parading as a drug company bought the manufacturer. And the only reason they were able to jack up the price is because we allow them to. Not because the pill wouldn't exist if the price wasn't jacked up. It existed just fine for many years at the old price. Only because pharma has duped folks like you into thinking that this is the way things have to be do they get away with it in the first place.

Pharma hasn't duped me into anything. I don't take prescription drugs and never have. Maybe that is the big problem in society; believing that you need some sort of drugs to survive?

 

[senseamp]

FDA approval is pretty expensive, the costs for the trials it can often run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If you want to introduce a competing product in the U.S. market you have to consider if you can even break even before your patent expires after the costs of getting FDA approval. There might be competing drugs in the European market that are known to work but don't have FDA approval, and individuals can try to smuggle them into the U.S. but then there's always the risk of customs impound. Plus your website may be taken down by the Feds, and people doing group buys on forums could always get infiltrated by DEA agents so its not exactly risk-free.

No way in hell is the government going to go after the patients legally. It would be horrible PR for them, especially when the US manufacturer is actively ripping off sick people. No jury would convict a dying person just trying not to get ripped off. But even if they did in some bizarre scenario, it's not a controlled substance, so it would be a slap on the wrist.
So the worst that will happen is it will get seized at customs with near zero probability, if ordered for personal use. But 50x cost differential is more than enough to offset that risk. Not telling anyone what to do or not to do, but math is math. And don't tell me it would be "theft" or whatever bullshit you fell for.