Agreed the only thing that could have made it more noob would be renaming it "Derpa Derp"
The guy who raised the price 5000% was a noob. The experienced guy knows not to do this unless they want the wrath of politicians and the media.
Experienced guy will slowly raise the price over a period of years as to not attract attention.
There is another issue I became aware of having to do with FDA. What they are doing is for old drugs that never went through modern approval and got grandfathered in, they are telling companies, if you do the studies on them to get them officially approved, we will give you an exclusivity. It's the most ridiculous thing ever, effectively they are giving monopolies to off patent drug manufacturers. So you are being hosed for your own good folks.
I feel like there are two issues in this thread and they're being convoluted.
The first, we have a generic drug, which is likely sold on fairly low margins because it has been off patent for so long. Along comes a spider, who sees a way to make a quick buck, and jacks up the price because the low margins had driven out many of the other manufacturers.
The second, we end up with very novel drugs, like Gilead's hepatitis C drug or Vertex's cystic fibrosis drug, which both cost quite a bit of money. Should these new drugs, which took a lot of money to develop (and likely include some costs from failed pipelines) be sold at generic margins? Just from a quick google search, the NIH had a budget of ~$30 billion, and outside of the DoD research programs, is the largest provider of basic research funding in the United States. 4 large drug companies, Roche, Novartis, J&J, and Merck spent ~$35 billion in research and development in 2013. Then there are tons of other, smaller companies spread throughout the US.
I think there is certainly an argument to be had for the latter case - where do we draw the line in cost for what become new, essential drugs for people? The former case, I think the guy is a huge jackass and should get slapped down over something like raising a non-patented drug 5000% because he just happened to have no competition.
I agree with what I think you're saying here.
I'm fine with incredible new drugs being expensive like Gilead's Solvadi/Harvoni, particularly when the quality of life and/or monetary cost of the alternatives (lifetime of taking less effective medications and/or liver transplant) is far more dangerous/outrageous.
Taking older drugs and jacking up the price in the extreme just seems predatory, however.
Disclosure: I own a bit of stock in Gilead, so obviously I'm not completely neutral here.
The Balanced Budget Amendment - the worst idea in politics.As long as you have fake money (money that government spends into irreconcilable debt), then you can never ascertain real costs and rewards.
Drug prices aren't the issue, it's government, manipulating prices that is the problem.
Government is spending itself crazy, and making up rule after rule, all while this country goes deeper and deeper in debt.
We'll socialize medicine, they say. And spending on medicine goes up. We'll regulate medicine, they say, and the cost of medicine goes up.
The only good government is a limited government. One that can't spend beyond it's means. One that is held accountable for the money it spends.
The first place to start is with a Federal Balanced Budget Amendment.
-John
This guy is a wormy pofs.Bernie turns down his donation. CEO is pissed off
http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/18/news/companies/turing-ceo-martin-shkreli-bernie-sanders/index.html
Why is Congress not holding hearings on drug prices? American consumers and businesses are hurting from paying for these. Instead it's Benghazi 24-7.
Faith in capitalism partially restoredTuring Pharmaceuticals, the company that last month raised the price of the decades-old drug Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750, now has a competitor.
Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company based in San Diego, announced today that it has made an alternative to Daraprim that costs about a buck a pill—or $99 for a 100-pill supply.
“While we respect Turing's right to charge patients and insurance companies whatever it believes is appropriate, there may be more cost-effective compounded options for medications, such as Daraprim,” Mark L. Baum, CEO of Imprimis, said in a news release.
Did they develop a brand new drug?
Now before anyone says anything remember there are laws/protections in place from market manipulation and the most basic example is the guy who has the only operating food store after a natural disaster cannot simply say he is selling baby food at $100.00 per serving simply because he needs to do some improvements to his property after the storm.
If that guy lobbies and greases enough politicians he can get a law passed that exempts him from Sherman, Clayton, Robinson-Patman, etc. And that is exactly what Big Pharma has done and the democrats passed a 2200 page monstrosity and they will not even discuss the real issue which is these monopoly exemptions and protections. It is obvious who they serve. What is not so obvious is why in the bleeping mother of all bleeping hells do people continue to tolerate that crap and keep voting for more of it.
Dude has such a punchable face.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015...ike-it-gets-people-talking-thats-what-art-is/Shkreli, the son of Albanian and Croatian immigrants according to the BBC, went on to imply that RZA’s comments could escalate to a feud. “[There's a ] big fucking check in RZA and Cilvaringz’ pocket now, but if they’re starting to turn up on me… The Albanian community is a very weird community. We’re some of the most tight-knit kind-of kill for each other, die for each other motherfuckers there are. People say it’s one of the craziest ethnicities there is in terms of their loyalty and bloodlines and shit like that. This thing [the Wu-Tang thing] is starting to get pretty tense.”
Again I'm not a lawyer. I am assuming he broke some kind of market manipulation or Sherman act statue, I could be wrong but I'll bet if someone qualified dug around they'd find something.
So, in other words, you fail.
Just had to bump this, seems like someone qualified dug around and found some shit to charge him on surprise!
admittedly its not for the drug increase but it will have the same effect.
These charges stem from allegations that long predate the drug price issue.