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

nytimes.com

331–340 of 461 posts

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

#331
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need a prescription to get it. And I don't believe it's legal for a person with the prescription to sell or give prescribed medicine to other other people.

Hire a researcher with toxoplasmosis ;)

Easier said than done, as toxoplasmosis promotes risky behavior of the sort that tends to be incompatible with a research career.

Of course the real problem here is the subversion of the controlled-distribution mechanism to serve a private rather than a public end, a tragedy of the regulatory commons if you like. The basic idea here is good; you don't want drugs like thalidomide being freely prescribed because if they find their way to a pregnant woman consumption is likely to result in horrific birth deformities. This is an abstraction to many Americans because the FDA restricted Thalidomide early, but growing up in Europe I became aware of it from quite a young age because there was a small-but-distinct demographic cohort of people with characteristic deformities.

But what's happening here is the drug manufacturer falsely claiming that there's a serious public health risk in order to get into the controlled-distribution system, and then using that to prevent any potential competitors from entering the market. I imagine that if the FDA had declined to make any of these drugs controlled-distribution then the strategic response would have been to hire a PR firm to plant stories about how the FDA doesn't care about medical vulnerabilities.

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

#332

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.

If this were the case, chances are very good that this drug wouldn't exist at all. Drug R&D would become politically driven, with earmarks being given by politicians which benefit their constituents rather than actually advancing the state of the art. Public money would be poured into research for drugs which address ailments in the public consciousness, rather than into drugs which may actually have a chance of success.

You really don't want medical science led by popular opinion.

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree that many people are looking at this business plan with envy. CEO's of "real" pharma companies know this business model is possible, but no one bothers with it. I think this is partly out of ethical standards (yes, CEO's, even pharma CEO's, can possess this) and partly out of knowing the inevitable backlash makes it not worth it for the business and their personal reputation. Again, while KV isn't a…

Finding ways to make generics super-profitable is definitely common. Turing is, arguably, the ugliest of the bunch, but there's more than enough ugly to go around. Your mythical "honest and kindly pharma CEO who wants nothing but for everyone to have cheap drugs" doesn't exist. Its Shkreli's all the way down: http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/06/allow-big-pharma-rip-us/ Bill Moyers: For example, last February, before its…

America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs.

To quote some comedian's take on this, 'in my country, your doctor tells you which drugs he wants to prescribe. In America, it's the other way around.' It's astonishing to me that direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising is so rampant here, when somehow we managed to eliminate this for tobacco advertising without causing the 1st amendment to self-destruct. Besides the first-order consequences of medically ignorant consumers besieging their doctors with requests from drugs they can't even pronounce properly, it's also created this bizarre culture where illness is normative and every medical condition has to have a cute nickname or acronym - it can't be long before we start seeing people break up in soap operas because 'I love you...but my hep C isn't compatible with your A-fib!'

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

#334

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…

> and the government protects your property such that others can't make it cheaper? How is this libertarian? This is the exact opposite. Without the FDA other companies could easily produce this product, it's out of patient but the claim is they are using government regulation to slow competition down. The exact opposite to libertarian.

My thoughts exactly. It seems to me that many of the problems in the health care system stem from the fact that there are soo many convoluted regulations that it's impossible to enter and compete in that market. And in many cases, people get in there and completely take advantage of the situation.

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think this is partly out of ethical standards (yes, CEO's, even pharma CEO's, can possess this) Not buying it. I'll buy the fallout argument, as that will hurt them monetarily, but I'm not guying them have any moral or ethical concerns with those being hurt by high drug prices.

What's more ethically questionable: spending billions in capital developing drugs to save lives, and trying to make money off that, or spending billions of capital on endeavors like entertainment services that don't save lives at all?

You know better than that. Have some more coffee.

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

#336

So firstly, "It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the most important medications needed in a basic health system" [1]. Its obvious that this a great economic move in the short run. What are the things that we can do so that companies aren't motivated by this type of business model? What are the long term actions people can do so that there are long term consequences for companies that…

It's not obvious, because inclusion on the Essential Medicines list means due to the TRIPS agreement, manufacturers can ignore patent restrictions on it entirely. The ACA makes it possible for insurance to refuse to cover Turing's drug; this gambit isn't going to work. Turing is going to get absolutely destroyed by secondary manufacturers and imports here.

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

#337
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we've agreed that the public can't hunt these people down and kill them for this kind of nonsense.

I have re-read your comment a dozen times, trying to grasp what you mean, and come up short each time. Do you mean to say that whenever a business makes a decision that you disagree with, you (or someone else) should feel morally entitled to go a kill the individuals working there? Or do you mean that whenever a business makes a decision that you disagree with, the state is entitled to focibly take the company? I per…

would you complain about the state simply setting up a plant to manufacture and distribute a generic version of the drug, thereby driving the predatory company out of business? that seems like it would be an ideal solution that doesn't involve forcibly taking anything away from anyone.

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

#338
Serious question, for the occasional lawyer: how likely is it that, based on this behaviour, that Shkreli be accused of murder, with a US judge finding grounds to that?

If that is the case, Switzerland would have to extradite him — and I doubt any accusation of economic misbehaviour would have a similar impact.

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

#339

That headline is just clickbait. It is available from Indian generic manufacturers for around 2 rupees a tablet. That is about 3 cents a tablet. India makes 80% of the generic drugs used around the world. If US hospital administrators are paying $750 a tablet, it sounds like the Indians have not bothered to apply for sales approval in the USA due to the low profit margin.

There is no generic approved in the US, at least. You can search ANDAs here: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/drugsatfda/index....

There is a little more user-friendly info here: http://www.drugs.com/availability/generic-daraprim.html

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

#340
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that the economic system that not only allows this, but incentivizes it. Witch hunting isn't going to fix a fundamentally broken economic system. We need to admit that our system is not optimal, and fix it. Rational people are always going to act in their own best self-interest.

Rational people are always going to act in their own best self-interest.

Well then, we should fix the system by eliminating all people who are less then 100% perfectly rational.

You go first.

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