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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

#321

Post by Lawtonfogle »

ken47 wrote: post #245
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From an economic and policy perspective, unfortunately, Turing is doing everything right. This is an economically misguided point of view. Free market decision-making can only be argued to be optimal in a free market system, which pharma is not, a distinction which the decision-makers certainly were intelligent enough to understand. Free market mechanisms either need to be put in place, or we need to stop allowing it…

>It is never economically optimal to make decisions that can directly lead to the deaths of citizens in the host society, in exchange for higher profits.

When the short term profits are great and the long term costs are too far for you to personally realize... it seems to make great sense.

Now it may not be optimal for society at large, but that doesn't matter when society at large isn't making the decision. For the one choosing, short of laws to punish them and with methods to launder any social guilt, it is economically optimal.

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

#322

Post by 404error »

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…

The masses should make a long term bet and short the company stock if its listed.

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

#323

Post by Frondo »

varelse wrote: post #310
Frondo wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since all markets are human inventions--there's no "free market" particle--what you're getting at is: Let's invent a system that makes explicit the choice of dollars over human lives, and let's call that "the free market". And of course, since freedom is one of those ideas that, in popular use, has been oversimplified to uselessness (e.g. freedom is good, more freedom is more good, without nuance), this "free market"…

I hate to agree that this sort of manipulation is inevitable in a free market, but I do. It's either that, or broadly, no more cheap #$%^ on Amazon. So what do you pick? Occasional sociopaths or social good at the expense of everything else getting more expensive? Because assuming the majority loves buying cheap #$@!, this seems like an absolute poster child for the US government to step in and countergame him by dir…

That's easy, I'd pick social good. If I had my way in building a system, I'd absolutely work to make it as least vulnerable to manipulation by sociopaths as possible. Not being a sociopath (and I'm not saying that you are, either), I really can't see a downside to picking social good over lower-cost shit from Amazon.

Building those sociopathic levers in by design? No way.

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

#325

Post by varelse »

ken47 wrote: post #250
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd reflect on why you are unable to relate to the majority of people around the internet who are very angry about this. The same way I don't relate to the "Obama is a Muslim" narrative on the internet or "9/11 was an inside job" narrative. I think appealing to outrage culture on the internet isn't the bulletproof argument you think it is.

I don't think your examples are sufficiently similar to the subject matter to make this a compelling argument.

Methinks I'm going to HN hell for presenting the disagreement here as a logical fallacy, but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

For I agree with drzaiuslordofthenukedfallenearthgetyourhandsoffmeyourdamneddirtygorilla even though I think I'm not a sociopath. And that's because I also think this is an excellent case for the government to step in and provide the strong parental middle-finger to Martin Shkreli that he deserves so we can still get the free market that does bring so much good and yet also punish the sociopaths who exploit its unavoidable corner cases like this. See Goedel's incompleteness theorem about why, broadly, there will always be corner cases (yeah yeah inconsistent statements in any consistent system, sue me).

See also I prefer Obamacare because all the other attainable alternatives are worse (In the same way I would prefer single-payer like medicare, but unless Bernie Sanders is our next president, we're not getting it).

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

#326

Post by shawn-furyan »

Kalium wrote: post #299
robotresearcher wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole thread is about a horrible abuse present in the current system. The potential for abuse in an alternate system does not disqualify it. There is no perfect system and bad actors are everywhere. However, I don't see terrible endemic problems in the UK, Canada or the Eurozone from importing drugs. I'm sure they exist sometimes. But in the entire rest of the G7 drug costs are less and their outcomes no worse t…

If the problem is abuse, that a proposed successor system may not be better is a major source of concern.

If the situation is as I read it:

- Importing drugs from countries with reliable drug regulatory infrastructure would have substantial benefits, including a check on cost (sorely needed), and improved availability of less profitable drugs

- Other similar countries are doing this without seeing measurable negative health outcomes

then getting hung up on this 'major concern' that seems to have been rendered moot elsewhere makes most people worse off. Mentioning the existence of potential (and unlikely?[1]) downsides is not an adequate cost-benefit analysis.

[1] not that it's unlikely that there will be people who try to take advantage of the system, but it seems unlikely that given appropriate regulatory care, the downsides will be unmanageable to the extent that they cause the change to allow drug imports to have an overall negative impact.

[edited for clarity, including the addition of the footnote]

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

#327

Post by thescriptkiddie »

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.

Price controls only cause shortages if the supply in inelastic and demand is elastic. If you make beer cheap then people will buy more until you can't keep up with demand. But pharmaceuticals (especially rx-only) don't work that way, because people only buy them if they really need them and need is relatively static. It also helps that most pharmaceuticals benefit well from economies of scale and are made from non-scarce feedstocks.

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

#328

Post by blumkvist »

robotresearcher wrote: post #311
blumkvist wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who is going to be in charge of them? Will they not become corrupt? That's a rhetorical question, of course. When they do get corrupt what do we do, since it's the same guys with the guns and court houses?

Is there clean drinking water in your house? Did you pay insane amounts for it? Do you live in fear of oppression by the water company? There are some very messed-up public works, but most of the time it works pretty well.

Water treatment is private where I am. Some places in the country it's (still) government ruled. They are on a regimen every other month it seems. Also the streets turn into rivers when it rains heavily. Oh... and their bills are higher too.

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

#329

Post by robotresearcher »

mason240 wrote: post #316
robotresearcher wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there clean drinking water in your house? Did you pay insane amounts for it? Do you live in fear of oppression by the water company? There are some very messed-up public works, but most of the time it works pretty well.

I'm not trying to be rude, but I can't fathom how you can think running a public utility like water treatment and capital intensive research and development are in anyway comparable to each other.

Water works represent an enormous public investment in R&D over hundreds of years. They didn't and don't invent themselves. It's an engineering triumph that they feel so routine.

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

#330

Post by fudgy73 »

rev_bird wrote: post #319
JTon wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post tickled my curiosity. So I went to Wikipedia... and found this: http://imgur.com/lNpPWkP

I was less surprised by the vandalism than I was by how tame it was.

Looks like it's gotten a bit worse: http://imgur.com/a/7X0Wt
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