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Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

nytimes.com

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Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#81

Post by pessimizer »

RogerL wrote: post #62
JulianMorrison wrote: post #9

Drug creation needs to be nationalized, 100% tax funded all the way from researcher to trials to manufacture, and the drugs sold at cost thereafter. And the pharmaceuticals industry needs to just go away.

So, I have a great but perhaps hare brained new idea for a drug/treatment. I'm willing to throw my tens of millions (heh) at it. Instead I have to go ask permission from the government, fight for funds, wait for approval, build massive infrastructure just to prove to the government I'm not wasting their money, and so on? I've worked on government contracts - defense - most of my career. It is not a model of innovatio…

> Instead I have to go ask permission from the government, fight for funds, wait for approval, build massive infrastructure just to prove to the government I'm not wasting their money, and so on?

As opposed to approaching private companies for permission, funds, approval, adhere to their compliance and management policies, and so on?

> So, I have a great but perhaps hare brained new idea for a drug/treatment. I'm willing to throw my tens of millions (heh) at it.

Your model where the financier is the same person as the scientist is not a common one.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#82

Post by ZenoArrow »

rodionos wrote: post #61

As much as my compassionate side is siding with hospitals and patients, the company should be allowed to charge any price it considers reasonable for its product. Also I didn't like the inconspicuous ad hominem attacks on the supply-side players. The side-effect is that it leads the reader away from a subtle observation that the fair market controls to prevent these policies are simply missing and regulators have don…

Should they be able to charge whatever they want when they have no competition? Isn't that against the whole free market ethos?

The logic being followed by this particular pharmaceutical company is that because it's a niche market the impact of these large price hikes is minimal. However, the impact is not minimal for those that depend on the drug, who are getting stiffed, either left with prices they may not be able to afford or increased insurance costs (either paid by the individual or their employer).

There should be a cap on behaviour such as this, such as prices cannot increase 50% above inflation in a single year. Details would need to be worked out but at least controls such as this would give the market time to respond, bringing in new competition, etc...

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#84

Post by eitally »

ck2 wrote: post #63

Thread on reddit says it is 2 cents per pill in India and entire treatment costs $1 https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/3lp6kr/

India has aggressively forced international pharmas to offer exceptionally low domestic pricing ... if they refuse, the alternative is that the Indian government authorizes generics, regardless of the patent status of the commercial drug.

India also has a "last mile" problem with medical care. It's still too common for villagers to slip through the cracks and not receive regular diagnosis or treatment.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#85

Post by cmiles74 »

bedhead wrote: post #55

I am a fund manager and I have followed Martin Shkreli since his prior company, Retrophin, went public about two years ago. Simply put, Martin is a sociopathic criminal with a well-established, and consistent track record of deceit, recklessness, failure, and just plain old stupidity. But he is also hyper-aggressive. He is currently living in Switzerland, and it's my understanding that he fled the country in order to…

It seems to me that the overall result would be other companies start manufacturing the generic and sell the drug for maybe 20% less than Martin and over time the price drops back down towards where it once started. In the meantime, this company either goes bankrupt or is sold off.

Or the government passes a law capping how much you can raise the price of a generic drug over so many years.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#86

Post by athenot »

andybak wrote: post #49
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #38

I'm a libertarian and completely in favor of private property and an open, informed marketplace. Having said that, this is out of control. If you know you're selling me a life-or-death product which has no peer, and the government protects your property such that others can't make it cheaper? It's not a market. It's rent-seeking, highway robbery. Bad actors are going to cause an overreaction that is going to seriousl…

> I'm a libertarian and completely in favor of private property and an open, informed marketplace. > Having said that, this is out of control. It sounds like you're well on your way to realising the flaw in straight-ahead libertarianism and joining those in the mainstream who want just enough market regulation to allow free markets without a huge social cost. I get the feel that most reasonable souls are in agreement…

This is highly despicable as it's pretty much guaranteed that some people will die from not being able to afford the med.

The market is not as efficient as we'd like to think. In a perfect libertarian world, another company pops up and competes to drive the prices down. However, even if the IP of the drug itself is public domain, there's a cost to ramp up a new production line, all for a product which has low intrinsic value commercially.

Shkreli purposely selected a drug that's needed enough (so guaranteed demand) but whose market is not too large, preventing bigger companies from jumping in. (And I'm ignoring for the moment his tactic to tightly secure the supply chain, essentially trying to build a little moat around this product.)

This puts would-be competitors in a tough spot, where the risk is to invest in setting up the manufacturing line, only to have the original company drop the price again and ensure they won't be able to recover their cost. For the sake of the patients, I can only hope there are generic makers who go for it anyway.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#87

Post by DanBC »

trymas wrote: post #79

It's so range inducing it's horrible. The guy is pure evil. Though, my question is, what does it mean "to acquire/own/have the rights to the drug"? If the drug is 62 years old, knowledge about it should be in public domain and why can't some other company start making it?

He owns the company that is the only current company making the drug. That has some advantages (knowledge of process; supplier and distributor contacts; control of distribution) but eventually another company will enter the market and undercut the price.

Other companies do similar things. Look at the treatment for Age-related Macular Degeneration - Avastin vs Lucentis.

Avastin is older, and cheaper. It's as effective as Lucentis. The same company makes both. That company refuses to try to licence avastin for use with AMD, which forces (at least, in the UK) doctors to instead use the very similar but very much more expensive lucentis. The compnay claims there are problems with avastin, but really those problems arise from incompetent handling ("People might use non-sterile needles to inject avastin! Lucentis comes in a pre-sterilised package!". Well, if you're worried about people using dirty needles you need to fix a lot more about that hospital.)

People are going blind because corporate greed.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#88

Post by pessimizer »

refurb wrote: post #56
pessimizer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually all national health care systems perform better (in every sense) than the American private sector one.

That's definitely untrue. Check out the cancer survival rates. The US exceeds most countries by far. Now, if you had said "Virtually all national healthcare system provide better care based on cost " I would have agreed with you.

The US system is motivated to overdiagnose cancer.

-----

"We need to be careful when comparing US and UK cancer care"

http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/08/17/we-need-t...

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#89

Post by restalis »

RogerL wrote: post #62
JulianMorrison wrote: post #9

Drug creation needs to be nationalized, 100% tax funded all the way from researcher to trials to manufacture, and the drugs sold at cost thereafter. And the pharmaceuticals industry needs to just go away.

So, I have a great but perhaps hare brained new idea for a drug/treatment. I'm willing to throw my tens of millions (heh) at it. Instead I have to go ask permission from the government, fight for funds, wait for approval, build massive infrastructure just to prove to the government I'm not wasting their money, and so on? I've worked on government contracts - defense - most of my career. It is not a model of innovatio…

"I have a great but perhaps hare brained new idea for a drug/treatment. I'm willing to throw my tens of millions (heh) at it."

If your motivation is to make the world a better place, you just publish your idea and if it will indeed be as good as you think it is, things will roll (in the supposed system) by themselves from there on. If your motivation is to get (much) more money than you pour in it when there are lives at stake, then this rises a red flag and should be treated as a public threat.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#90

Post by gpcz »

rodionos wrote: post #61

As much as my compassionate side is siding with hospitals and patients, the company should be allowed to charge any price it considers reasonable for its product. Also I didn't like the inconspicuous ad hominem attacks on the supply-side players. The side-effect is that it leads the reader away from a subtle observation that the fair market controls to prevent these policies are simply missing and regulators have don…

The US Government had serious trouble reproducing FOGBANK ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK ), and one cause was that even the original chemical engineers didn't fully understand the role of a certain impurity in a material. Is it possible to produce blueprints for a chemical plant that doesn't omit some inherent but important knowledge?
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