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

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

#271

Post by unprepare » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #248

caseysoftware wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though it's $750 per dose now, since they have exclusive control over the market they could decrease it to whatever whenever they wanted to starve competitors.. probably after said competitors have invested in doing it.

This is a possible strategy, but is rarely used, as it is very risky (, it is likely to cost a great deal of market share in the long term). I have looked into it, and found very few examples of a company which tried to lure a competitor into a market, then under-sell them. The opposite (under-sell competition to gain market share then hike prices) also appears to be quite unpopular in the real market, for the opposi…

I think its somewhat common, and even occasionally successful:

Amazon prime costs amazon money, and the original fire tablets were sold at cost - i suspect the new 50$ tablets are not very profitable either

Walmart has commonly been accused of this practice for various products

Google's original Nexus 7 tablet

I believe Apple ended up losing money at least a quarter or two on the app store/itunes

Granted there are few examples, but its certainly prevalent enough that its a legitimate business concern - the bigger disparity is that it takes a pretty enormous size for a company to succeed in such a tactic, I doubt turing has the kind of capital to lose that the likes of Walmart, Apple, Google and Amazon do.

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

#272

Post by mdesq » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

It seems like drug manufacturers should be regulated as utilities in some regard. Sure, you can have competition, but at some point your products become so important for normal societal life that you are regulated as to how much you can charge, or how much you can increase costs.

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

#273

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#274

Post by ddingus » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:29 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #139

bkor wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loads of things have been handed over from the government to companies within The Netherlands. Your general statement that governments are not good I highly doubt. Especially for basic services, governments seem to run them cheaper and more reliably.

Well, in the US, we have the Veterans Administration and Indian Health Service doing a poor job and wasting a lot of money and are unreliable.

Part of that failure is political. People don't want them to work because they prefer markets do it.

A great example of this in action is the silly Post Office pre pay benefit requrement. It's making the Post Office look really bad because they appear to not have enough to operate. The truth is they operate just fine, and are self-funded. Congress changed rate structures and imposed prepament of multiple decades of benefits, both of which would make no sense to any reasonable organization.

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

#275

Post by itsybitsycoder » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

elliottcarlson wrote: post #123

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We put a food processor who knowingly shipped tainted food in prison?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/20/us/peanut-butter-salmonella-tr...

Good, he committed mass murder for money, he should be prison. We should do this more often.

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

#276

Post by Kalium » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

mvanvoorden wrote: post #179

if_by_whisky wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your solution would stop innovation in any industry

Innovation happens because people are curious and want to make their (or other's) lives easier, this has nothing to do with patents, or if it's private or government run. Want to see real innovation? See for example the home made radio receivers people made in WWII, that fit in a small tin can, or visit an Amish settlement ( http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/ ). Not to mention hacker/maker spaces and fablabs,…

Yes and no. Many kinds of innovation happen because people are curious... provided they can afford to indulge their curiosity. Of course, I don't know many people who can personally afford to do the kind of research they are employed to do, so there are important limits at work. Funding plays a major role in enabling curiosity.

That said, there's also application. Curiosity may lead to someone discovering a particular complex chemical, but curiosity won't turn it into a cheaply produced pill available at your corner pharmacy.

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

#277

Post by gknoy » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

JulianMorrison wrote: post #229

mindcrime wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a public good and a natural human right. No they aren't. Saying that is equivalent to saying that you would be justified in putting a gun to a chemist's head and forcing him to make a drug for you even if he didn't want to. But there's no reason to say that your "right" to a drug trumps his right to be free from threat of violence and denial of agency. What you're talking about is more of an entitlement than…

Yeah, yeah, I've read Ayn Rand too, but she's wrong. Even from a selfish perspective , public health is so crammed with positive externalities it pays for itself. Nobody's going to force chemists to make drugs. Instead the way tax works is that you force everyone to pay a fraction of their productivity into a fund that gets spent paying the chemist to make drugs, the pharmacist to deliver them, etc. It's very similar…

Judging from most of my Facebook feed, it feels like a lot of people in this country do not value that more highly than miniscule taxes.

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

#278

Post by Kalium » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #269

Kalium wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While broadly true, this is an area where counterfeiting is easier, detection is difficult, enforcement is harder, and legitimate manufacturing is often expensive. In other words, exactly the conditions to encourage all kinds of abuses.

That is all true but we don't have to buy from shady producers. Canadian and European producers supply their own very safe and mature markets. Buy the stuff that the UK NHS buys and at the same prices - their scale gets them good deals (with notable exceptions). This can't be worse than the current deal.

This might surprise you, but conditions that encourage abuse also encourage people to find ways to avoid having their abuse detected.

Yeah, it can be worse than the current deal. Just look at the problems China has with counterfeit food.

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

#279

Post by frogpelt » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

ben_bai wrote: post #121

Well, in german there is one word describing how to calculate something like this: "Leidensdruckanalyse". It's a dark word, because it basically means: Why give people drugs for $13.50 if the disease is horrible enough that they will, in the long run, accept $750 to ease the pain or to not die. We have laws preventing something like this, but then the industry just has to invent a "new" drug (basically the old one wi…

You may view it as sad.

But I think two things are happening: 1. The price of the drug was artificially deflated. 2. The somewhat-free market is deciding how to handle the correction.

If the market for this drug was interfered with and the price was not allowed to go up, who's to say the manufacturer couldn't just discontinue the product? Would that help?

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

#280

Post by nickff » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

unprepare wrote: post #271

nickff wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a possible strategy, but is rarely used, as it is very risky (, it is likely to cost a great deal of market share in the long term). I have looked into it, and found very few examples of a company which tried to lure a competitor into a market, then under-sell them. The opposite (under-sell competition to gain market share then hike prices) also appears to be quite unpopular in the real market, for the opposi…

I think its somewhat common, and even occasionally successful: Amazon prime costs amazon money, and the original fire tablets were sold at cost - i suspect the new 50$ tablets are not very profitable either Walmart has commonly been accused of this practice for various products Google's original Nexus 7 tablet I believe Apple ended up losing money at least a quarter or two on the app store/itunes Granted there are fe…

Those are good examples, but I would argue that if a practice is sustainable (and often sustained), it is not problematic. If Amazon wishes to provide Prime at a loss to encourage customers to buy products which Amazon will make money on (enough to compensate for Prime), is there a problem? Would there be a problem if Amazon offered to ship things sooner in exchange for a promise that you would shop at their site more often (even if this promise plan cost them money)?