Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:16 PM UTC

brixon wrote: post #15

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.

The drugs might end up being cheaper, but there will be much less research for drugs (aka less drugs in the future). Greed is a good motivator.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the likes of Martin Shkreli to use their profits to fund new drug R&D. Call me a cynic, but I just don't see that happening.

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

#92

Post by pessimizer » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:16 PM UTC

antr wrote: post #51

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.

I agree, a healthcare system, the question is at what cost per patient/treatment. The healthcare system, is a system, not an industry per se. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for public healthcare... but the comment feels like a knee jerk reaction.

The US government currently spends more per capita on healthcare costs than Britain, France, or Canada.

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

#93

Post by lstroud » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:17 PM UTC

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.

What's the last thing you bought that was manufactured by government. If you think prices are high now, then go look at prices of non subsidized government manufactured products. I think you will change your mind.

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

#94

Post by nrr » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #78

What prevents US hospitals from importing the drug, for example from Europe?

Anything going that route will lack FDA approval/indications/contraindications, a Medicare baseline price, and insurance companies willing to pay for it. This makes the average hospital less willing to lean in the direction of self-importation.

Granted, this is import restrictions notwithstanding. Some substances can't even be brought across the border except under penalty of imprisonment for smuggling in a controlled substance. There are often no permits that one can acquire, which means that the drugs must be manufactured in the US.

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

#95

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #60

jakobdabo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same greed makes the drug industry to develop drugs which treat the illness rather than cure it. Regular drug users are much better for them than one-time users.

This is an absolutely ridiculous statement. Last year Gilead sold a drug that cures hepatitis C. Cures! The error in your thinking is that curing a patient results in less money than just chronically treating one. Not so!

>The error in your thinking is that curing a patient results in less money than just chronically treating one. Not so!

Come again? Please explain how that works.

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

#96

Post by bedhead » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

cmiles74 wrote: post #85

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.

That's the loophole though, the quantities are so small that realistically, no pharmaceutical company has the incentive to make their version of the drug, even at $750 per dose. There are still costs to making a drug that's off-patent, and sometimes the number of patients being treated is only in the double digits. Additionally, a competing drug released at say, $500 per dose would still be considered predatory anyway. This is really the backwater of pharma.

The case of KV Pharmaceuticals that I cited was a little different since compounding labs had already been making the drug Makena. In that case, the FDA actually sent these labs a letter essentially saying, "Go ahead and keep making the drug even though KV now has a patent for it. We are choosing to not enforce their patent because their price increase was bs."

Maybe the government can prove its worth and get off its ass and quickly figure out how to close this loophole, then go after Martin and others like him.

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

#97

Post by cmiles74 » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:20 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #69

One issue is that at some point "any profit" ceased to be considered a good outcome, and companies are now expected to do better and better when this makes very little sense. I imagine a simple solution would be a "reasonable profit limit" law. In other words, if there is evidence that your costs to manufacture are $X, your sale price ( especially in a monopoly scenario) ought to be strictly limited to some "reasonab…

I'm not so sure about your solution, but I agree that this seems like the inevitable result of make "any profit" every quarter.

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

#98

Post by crdoconnor » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:20 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #72

assface wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've yet to see any one industry that has been nationalised as is performing better (in every sense) than the private sector. The nationalized health care programs seem to be performing better in other countries than ours.

Depends on how you define "better." In any nationalized system with controlled prices, you will have shortages.

You define it as better healthcare outcomes (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.) at 50% of the cost (UK).

Or, in one extreme case - the same healthcare outcomes at 1/10th of the cost (Cuba).

>In any nationalized system with controlled prices, you will have shortages.

In any system where there is scarcity you will have shortages. Period.

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

#99

Post by mason240 » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:23 PM UTC

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.

It's really shocking to such an anti-technological development comment on site about technological development.

If the federal government had locked down all IT development in the 1980s as you proposing they do for pharmaceuticals, we wouldn't have this forum to comment on, much less the industry it is built around.

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

#100

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 1:24 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #72

assface wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've yet to see any one industry that has been nationalised as is performing better (in every sense) than the private sector. The nationalized health care programs seem to be performing better in other countries than ours.

Depends on how you define "better." In any nationalized system with controlled prices, you will have shortages.

We have shortages in the US. Drugs nobody wants to produce because there's not enough money in it. Artificially produced shortages caused by DEA putzing around with supplies. And now, shortage of affordable Daraprim.