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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

#391

Post by Gustomaximus »

jakobegger wrote: post #28

It should be pretty obvious by now that the pharma sector is completely out of control. Again and again I read about the rising cost of healthcare, how we can't afford to support an aging society, and now even "solved" problems are used to squeeze even more profits from those who can afford the least. And I'm not talking about the US, this is a world wide problem. Instead of making international treaties that make en…

It does look like we are entering an age of 'trickle down medicine'. Sad to see after such humanitarian improvements in the West post-WW2. Even Places with great universal healthcare like Australia and UK are increasingly looking to privatise. This blows my mind as we can look at the US to see where this direction will take the system.

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

#392

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

Why don't the other suppliers jump back in when the price gets jacked up?

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

#393

Post by crusso »

llamataboot wrote: post #378
crusso wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often see the "free market" referenced in contexts like this where it's the interactions of a corrupted government entity that is at the root of the trouble - yet the free market is the entity in the crosshairs.

Where is the government interference here? How is the FDA or whomever enabling this behavior?

The FDA was the big lever that Skreli was attempting to use to skew the market in his favor.

If the FDA weren't so powerful, flawed, and easily corruptible, the strategy would make no sense.

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

#394

Post by cortesoft »

codexon wrote: post #364
ken47 wrote: 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 reading of free market theory with which most people, including its founder, would agree, is one where the goal is to maximize utility, not wealth. This is a vitally important distinction, and one that the layperson often overlooks. I would argue that human life is not limitless in utility and the free market establishes a price range on it. Like it or not, there is a price tag on the utility of a human life. If…

The sentence "If you need to spend 100k per year on drugs to live and you cannot make 100k per year, then the free market has decided that your life is not worth the cost because you are not creating 100k worth of value to trade 100k worth of drugs you are taking out of the market" is simply not true.

The free market doesn't say anything about the worth of a life being only equal to how much an individual can earn. It says the market price of something is equal to what people are willing to pay for it. We have things like insurance that allow us to have more medical care than we could afford as individuals, and that is completely within the concept of a free market.

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

#395

Post by themartorana »

wdewind wrote: post #349
thephyber wrote: post #344

Interview with Shkreli about this price increase: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-21/why-turing-i...

I encourage everyone to watch this...maybe it's all bs but among the interesting points Shkreli says: -They have reduced or eliminated co-pays so no patient is paying as much out of pocket as they used to -The drug is still 50% given away to people who cannot afford it -The company ships drugs to patients before resolving disputes with insurance providers -Shkreli's view is that it is in the best long term interests…

They're trying to fleece insurance companies. Guess who pays for that? Save your $25 copay, you'll need it to pay your 40% (low end) year-over-year premium increases.

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

#396

Post by sdenton4 »

owen_griffiths wrote: post #375
caseysoftware wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking less of the reverse-engineering costs and more of the hard production costs. Equipment, personnel, production time, etc. Those are non-trivial costs even if the complete formula and process is known.

right, so the drug that was getting sales of 600k per year was probably not worth the hassle of maintaining a compliant manufacturing line. does that not suggest a price rise was valid?

It's a time-arbitrage problem: there's no one else producing it (thus no free market) so they get to charge literally whatever they want since they're the only manufacturers, for as long as it takes a competitor to build another competing production line. This is reprehensible.

Once competition returns, the price drops again, and no one makes ludicrous profits anymore. But if the expected returns in competitive conditions are miniscule, there may not be sufficient incentive to produce a competitive market for this individual drug again.

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

#397

Post by shard972 »

jakobegger wrote: post #28

It should be pretty obvious by now that the pharma sector is completely out of control. Again and again I read about the rising cost of healthcare, how we can't afford to support an aging society, and now even "solved" problems are used to squeeze even more profits from those who can afford the least. And I'm not talking about the US, this is a world wide problem. Instead of making international treaties that make en…

This is all due to IP laws, I really hope that countries like china and india stay strong on their position of "Fuck IP Laws".

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

#398

Post by codexon »

cortesoft wrote: post #394
codexon wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reading of free market theory with which most people, including its founder, would agree, is one where the goal is to maximize utility, not wealth. This is a vitally important distinction, and one that the layperson often overlooks. I would argue that human life is not limitless in utility and the free market establishes a price range on it. Like it or not, there is a price tag on the utility of a human life. If…

The sentence "If you need to spend 100k per year on drugs to live and you cannot make 100k per year, then the free market has decided that your life is not worth the cost because you are not creating 100k worth of value to trade 100k worth of drugs you are taking out of the market" is simply not true. The free market doesn't say anything about the worth of a life being only equal to how much an individual can earn. I…

I did not mention insurance to simplify the discussion. Why would I bother listing all the possible situations that don't even change the outcome?

Of course you can buy insurance as a sort of reverse lottery to cover your costs. But you paid into that insurance and it is not required to cover everything. The co-pays/insurance can also bankrupt you.

And my main point still stands. If you cannot afford the cost of life saving medication, with or without insurance, then the free market has decided that your life is worth less than the cost of medication.

Saying the free market doesn't put a cost on human life and that it doesn't encourage price gouging is simply false.

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

#399

Post by themartorana »

emodendroket wrote: post #247
monocasa wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think single payer healthcare in the US gets you 95% of the way there. At that point the government is in control of most of the revenue to the pharmaceutical companies leaving them in a much better negotiating position. It even makes sense to then bring some of the pharmaceutical production "in house" to cut costs since you're de facto paying for all of the pharmaceutical research anyway.

Medicare would even be in a pretty good negotiating position now if it weren't barred by statute from doing negotiations.

Mind boggling, this. There's zero rational explanation other than government-sponsored profiteering, and yet still this is a thing.

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

#400

Post by bduerst »

codexon wrote: post #382
ken47 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the statement you are latching onto is where I said that it is never economically optimal to allow someone to die in exchange for higher profit, so allow me to clarify. In this case, it seems nearly impossible to make a concrete case that links this monopolistically-determined price increase to something that comes close to morally justifying the potential loss of human lives. And as we know, pharma is not…

I don't see how pharma is not a free market in this case. The drug in question isn't even protected by a patent anymore. Other companies are free to create a generic version of it. Government regulation has nothing to do with this. The free market has everything to do with this. The price of a life saving drug is worth either all your money or however much the seller wants to charge for it, as decided by the free mar…

One of reasons Turing paid $55 million for Daraprim, rather than just produce the chemical compound pyrimethamine, is because it's an approved Medicare drug.
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