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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

#141

Post by JulianMorrison »

LordKano wrote: post #133
JulianMorrison wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence the manufactured outrage at "socialism". The only way to make people consciously vote to stay poor and sick is to convince them that God, freedom and apple pie depend on supporting team blue rather than team red.

That makes for a superficially witty slogan but look at inner cities. Poor people have been voting for Democrats for 50 years and they're still poor. Getting people out of poverty is a lot more complicated than which political party one supports.

Mayor does not trump congress, unsurprisingly.

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

#142

Post by paulmd »

danmaz74 wrote: post #59

> With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing. > The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. This is t…

In order to produce a generic, you need to prove that it has the same efficacy as the namebrand drug. It's not the same thing as a full FDA trial, it's small-scale and you're basically just proving that you're ending up with the same active ingredient and that it has the same effects in patients (i.e. you're not doing something differently in the formulation/delivery that's causing problems or impeding the efficacy of the drug).

You can't do that for these drugs, because the only way to get ahold of the namebrand drug is from the official supplier, and they won't sell it to you.

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

#144

Post by werber »

tammer wrote: post #27

I used to work for a generics manufacturer, and indeed this was their MO. Seek out old drugs that sill have a very viable market but are under the radar of the big guys, undersell until they're the only supplier left, then jack up the price when patients have no choice. It's despicable and seems inevitable with the current regulation model.

Tammer : If you wrote an article about your experience, I'd love to read it.

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

#145

Post by ant6n »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #36
brixon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actually don't agree at all. There is a big danger in the approach I gave, but it's political interference. If the god-botherers can be forced to keep their mitts off, I expect my way would create more basic research and more simple effective drugs. Greed motivates chasing the slight change that will let your company replace an ageing-out-of-patent drug with a freshly patented one, drugs for rich people, drugs aime…

Also preventing hair-loss, and prolonging erections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA0l1JXhLaI

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

#146

Post by jerf »

clavalle wrote: post #129
jerf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, that actually sounds like it's already illegal from general business regulation. As in, no new laws needed, get the ones we have enforced. Wouldn't be surprised you can already pierce the corporate veil without new laws too. This is not specifically in reply to the parent, but the point fits here: I'd observe that calling for more regulation or even outright nationalization to fix this, when it's…

Perhaps not more, but faster and perhaps more thoroughly in order to change the player's risk assessment. By the time these companies are called out they amass huge war chests and tie these things up in the courts for years while enriching their investors and management teams. Then, when the hammer falls, that company disintegrates on some level and, often, these management teams spread to similar companies and do it…

My point is "Let's write more regulations" is "let's keep things the same and hope it turns out better".

It's easy to call for more regulations but it sounds a lot more to me like the core problem is a priority mismatch in enforcement. A lot harder to fix, but certainly step one seems to me to be to get people to stop calling for "more" regulation and start calling for the core problem of ineffective regulatory agencies to be addressed. Betcha if you took a look at what the relevant agencies were doing with their time instead of dealing with this, you'd be less than pleased.

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

#147

Post by restalis »

ck2 wrote: post #12

When I see "treating a life-threatening disease" and $750 a pill, formerly $14, I think people need long prison sentences to solve that. If we can put food processors who knowingly ship tainted food in prison in this country for endangering or even killing people, we can certainly imprison people for endangering lives by preventing the reception of medication.

The drill is, in such scenarios, to shift attention from the high price needed to be paid for one's survival to "let's help raise the money" instead. Give it a little bit, not far from now I expect this to get accepted like a lot of other existing ones.

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

#148

Post by rsync »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #108
mason240 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It really isn't comparable. Computers are tools. Drugs are health. They are a public good and a natural human right. Holding people's health hostage is unacceptable whether you do it with a knife in an alley, or a capitalist health system. Mixing them up like the USA system does is a category error.

"Drugs are health."

Only a sick (person/group/society/culture) would link them like this. Drugs are, in fact, dis-ease. They are the opposite of health.

Real food, real exercise, real work and real sleep. That's health. Drugs are at best dis-ease and at worst tools of predation and exploitation.

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

#149

Post by paulmd »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #140
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…

From an economic and policy perspective, unfortunately, Turing is doing everything right. Makena is probably not a great comparison as its used for prevent early birth, which is something of an edge case for certain pregnant women, versus Daraprim, which is a more common drug. It is the only FDA approved drug for Toxoplasmosis. According to wikipedia: Up to half of the world's population is infected with toxoplasmosi…

It's way down there in the article, but Turing's distributor (Impax) is tampering with the generic approval process. They use a controlled distribution strategy where you need to buy it directly from them, and they won't sell it to anyone who uses it for approval testing. Without the namebrand drug, there's no way to prove that your generic is equally efficacious, and thus no generic approvals and no competition.

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

#150

Post by clavalle »

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 used to be Libertarian, too, until I realized one very important thing: a pure market approach does not take into account exploitation.

It assumes that exploitation can be handled within the same system that spawned it -- the market -- and it simply can't.

Much of the underlying mathematics of modern market theory assume that expectations on transactions are positive. Markets only move toward efficiency under that assumption. That is why things like muggings, an exploitative transaction, can never lead to market efficiency.

Exploitation is where this assumption, and therefore the free market, breaks down. If a person might die if they don't make a deal that is clearly exploitation.

In this case the guy is taking advantage of government constructed barriers to entry but, at its heart, that plan can only be successful because there is an exploitative element to the original transaction. If this guy was selling interesting pencils, for example, such a plan would never pan out.

We need some sort of extra-market intervention in the case of potentially exploitative transactions. That is the litmus test and just the fumes from this company set it off.

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