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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

#421

Post by m_mueller »

closetnerd wrote: post #412
afr6262 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shkreli seems like a scumbag but how is that different from what Valeant, Mallinckrodt and others do. Buy another pharma company and jack up the price. http://www.wsj.com/articles/pharmaceutical-companies-buy-riv... I'm honestly looking for an answer here. Maybe there is a good reason Valeant can and should be able to get away with it.

Short answer is they're not different. He likely has a brash personality making him an easy target.

In other words, blame the game. From where I come from it seems very strange that medical services / prescribed medicine has free floating 'market prices' in the US. There is no such thing as a functioning market for these products - you have complete information asymmetry as well as government enforced monopoly on medication (pharmaceutical patents). Letting the providers set the price is just asking for trouble. Negotiating medical prices on government level and setting fixed prices for medical services (adjusted periodically) is absolutely necessary for a functioning general healthcare.

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

#422

Post by m_mueller »

mtgx wrote: post #103
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…

Yet people are still quick to say "...but what about Big Pharma?" when there's a discussion about abolishing patents. I don't know if patents should be abolished completely, but if there's a discussion about a serious patent reform, we should stop considering pharmaceuticals as some kind of exception, and apply the new reform equally to everyone, instead of allowing exceptions for Big Pharma, or worse, watering down…

Your problem aren't patents. Pharmaceutical patents exist all over the world, including in countries with mandatory general public healthcare (i.e. pretty much all of the developed world except the US). The problem is the lack of oversight on prescribed medicine and medical services. Patents are a government mandated monopoly. That's fine, as long as government also mandates and/or negotiates prices as a condition bound to the patent. It seems so obvious, I kind of feel bad to spell out such a trivial interrelationship.

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

#423

Post by VikingCoder »

stephengoodwin wrote: post #420

I'm not familiar with pharmaceutical patents. How does a company maintain exclusive rights to market a drug for 62 years?

I believe it's more that most companies keep making minor improvements, and keep patenting then.

But with something like this, I believe they're just hoping it takes another company a long time to get approval to ship a generic equivalent.

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

#424

Post by Zigurd »

frogpelt wrote: post #279
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?

Best satire on this thread.

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

#425

Post by visarga »

esarbe wrote: post #157

This is insane. But then again; the whole pharmaceuticals business is insane. Why again do we have a problem with antibiotics resistant bacteria? Because we stopped researching antibiotics in the 1970, because antibiotics weren't profitable anymore. (That, and the practice to feed antibiotics to our livestock to enhance growth, I guess.) Research and trials shouldn't be done by the companies. Instead it should be don…

These guys are making a profit from people's sickness and desperation. I found it distasteful to place making a profit above the mission of providing health care. Market driven economy is blind to other concerns and only listens to money.

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

#426

Post by sageikosa »

dperfect wrote: post #193
Bluestrike2 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what would happen, but the generics companies can't procure sufficient samples due to the changes in how Daraprim is distributed. So long as Shkreli is able to control distribution tightly enough, there's no worry about a generic coming onto the market.

I don't completely understand how they can effectively prevent generics companies from producing it (even through tightly controlled distribution), but if that's the case, I believe that should be the story here as opposed to the bit about raising prices. Under normal market conditions, either the demand and price will naturally incentivize generics to enter the market (even at high costs), or this is really not much…

Or perhaps the story should be about how the drug market is not normal. It is regulated, i.e. ruled, by bureaucratic policy and operating procedures.

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

#427

Post by Zigurd »

danmaz74 wrote: post #78

What prevents US hospitals from importing the drug, for example from Europe?

At $500,000 per course of medication per patient, it is still vastly cheaper to export the patient if you can't import the drug. I'm a little surprised some insurers have not tried doing that: Send the patient to Canada or Europe for treatment.

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

#428

Post by unsupak »

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…

He's no different from the other Wall Street thugs. Though he being an outsider may stand out more and make an easier target for NYT compared to his other colleagues.

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

#429

Post by zaroth »

anigbrowl wrote: post #315
cmiles74 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the overall result would be other companies start manufacturing the generic and sell the drug for maybe 20% less than Martin and over time the price drops back down towards where it once started. In the meantime, this company either goes bankrupt or is sold off. Or the government passes a law capping how much you can raise the price of a generic drug over so many years.

The strategy is to prevent other companies from manufacturing the generic by withholding supply from them so as to prevent them demonstrating bioequivalence. ISTM that the least-onerous regulatory solution would be to require manufacturers to provide supply at cost to FDA on demand for testing purposes.

It seems amazing that supply can be clamped down to such an extent that a competitor literally couldn't obtain some samples for bio-equivalence testing, even under a false pretense if necessary.

Completely agree that if someone is willing to pay the list price, they should be guaranteed availability within some reasonable time-frame for testing purposes.

I assume if the only drug line is effectively "shut down" then there's no way to run bio-equivalence and to bring on a new manufacturer they must test some other way? I guess whatever that procedure is, should take effect if the pills can't be ordered for testing.

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

#430

Post by ddingus »

protomyth wrote: post #283
ddingus wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

It has nothing to do with desire for markets (other than inspiring people that they work better), its the political CYA and patronage that allows people who the government has made commitments to to die. When you can kill people and not go to jail, it is beyond belief.

Actually, in the case of the Post Office, it does. The same is true for other successful government programs and services.
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