2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'
cbc.ca

What if, in a single payer model, a resesrching entity that creates a new treatment which is in turn approved by the government, automatically forfeits any rights to the drug, but is guaranteed royalties for 20 years or so? Manufacturers don't have any limits on what they may or may not create, but there is a minimum price at which the government will pay for it, similar to the "cost+profit" model seen in the defense industry. Likewise, the obscure cheap drugs that get abandoned then have the rights purchased by sociopathic hedge fund managers would instead be manufactured by the state and sold at cost.

Is that so crazy?

"When Mallinckrodt acquired Questcor in 2014, Synacthen Depot was one of the products in the portfolio. It was losing money then and still is. Moreover, in the spring of 2014, Mallinckrodt was told by the existing supplier of the product that they would cease production in early 2016," a Mallinckrodt spokesman said in an email to CBC News.

So the company faced an unexpected reduction in supply, and the drug might have been unprofitable at the previous price. One can object to the fact that the means of pharmaceutical production are privately owned, but given that these are not currently non-profit institutions, the outrage seems misplaced. There's nothing "absurd" about it.

Edit:

I'd like to address some of the commenters, who seem to have misinterpreted my comment as a defense of this company, or the pharmaceutical industry in general.

This comment is an objection to the style of journalism in this article: light on information, heavy on emotion. I've said nothing in defense of the corporation.

Some have suggested that these corporations should not increase prices in order to uphold some set of moral principles. I take it for granted that corporations are only answerable to power, and any limitations you might wish to impose upon them must either take the form of collective action (boycotts/protests) or regulation. Perhaps motivating either of these was the intent of the article, but if so the author went about expressing this wish in a way that I find objectionable, by appealing to emotion rather than reason and disguising an ideological belief as factual reporting.

Naturally regulated markets satisfy customer demands at the lowest cost when compared to the results any other system.