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Turing CEO Defends $750 Pill in Reddit AMA

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Re: Turing CEO Defends $750 Pill in Reddit AMA

#51

Post by [deleted] »

astazangasta wrote: post #42
petilon wrote: post #12

The problem with healthcare in America is insurance. When you are insured and insurance is paying for everything patients don't care how much anything costs. (See Tragedy of the Commons). And the drug companies charge $250 to $750 a pill or $14,000 for a years worth of drugs (recent cholesterol drugs Repatha and Praluent) to $250,000 (cancer drugs) and the drug companies justify it by saying insurance pays for it any…

The problem is not insurance. First of all insurance companies are not that good at shielding patients from costs; most people have deductibles and out of network expenses if they even have insurance at all. Second, even with insurance medical bankruptcy is rampant (the main cause of bankruptcy). Third, insurance companies have an obvious incentive to lower costs, it means they make more profit. They just don't have…

[deleted]

Re: Turing CEO Defends $750 Pill in Reddit AMA

#52

Post by carbonatedmilk »

astazangasta wrote: post #42
petilon wrote: post #12

The problem with healthcare in America is insurance. When you are insured and insurance is paying for everything patients don't care how much anything costs. (See Tragedy of the Commons). And the drug companies charge $250 to $750 a pill or $14,000 for a years worth of drugs (recent cholesterol drugs Repatha and Praluent) to $250,000 (cancer drugs) and the drug companies justify it by saying insurance pays for it any…

The problem is not insurance. First of all insurance companies are not that good at shielding patients from costs; most people have deductibles and out of network expenses if they even have insurance at all. Second, even with insurance medical bankruptcy is rampant (the main cause of bankruptcy). Third, insurance companies have an obvious incentive to lower costs, it means they make more profit. They just don't have…

This isn't a story of drug company overreach, it's about how your government has driven the costs of compliance so high that it's not worth making a drug unless you can extract monopoly rent from it.

The drug (pyrimethamine) has been in the public domain for more than 30 years, but in the US the government imposed costs mean that it wasn't (until now) worthwhile for another manufacturer to go through the process of US certification for such a low volume, low margin drug.

You can buy pyrimethamine for $0.10 a tablet in most of the rest of the world, but that's not thanks to the power of socialised medicine. It's because of less onerous government regulation that means you can manufacture your drug for $0.10, comply with regulations and still turn a profit.

Re: Turing CEO Defends $750 Pill in Reddit AMA

#53

Post by kolbe »

jnbiche wrote: post #50
kolbe wrote: post #46

I love this as an example of how broken the USA is. Democracies, for better or worse, mean that the government represents the will of the people. Determine 'will' however you want (majority vote, enlightened representatives, reddit poll, &c), and you would find overwhelming support for at least stopping Shkreli from doing this, and probably worse. What do we get instead? Shkreli will gain a few hundred million dollar…

> It's broken because our generation lacks the constitution (and possibly aptitude) to push for the changes necessary. If you mean Gen X or Y, that's just wrong. Those two generations basically got Obama elected in 2008 (who got out and canvassed, and ran his Internet campaign and much of his meatspace campaign, and voted ), and look what happened: vontinued never-ending war, police brutality on the rise, drug war on…

Changes happen in the streets, not the ballot box. The fact that you think real change only takes place by choosing the "right" one of two (largely indistinguishable) major party candidates every four years is part of the problem.

Change is hard. It takes dedication and sacrifice. It takes wit and cunning and luck. But we live in a country where if you go out and try to make those changes, you will not be arrested (for very long) or killed. Your family will not be tortured. In fact, when people do attempt to make changes, our country encourages them. There are very few places in the world where this can be said. And groups dedicated to making changes this way have altered the course of this country. The LGBT community is doing it right now. Racial minorities have done it in the past. Anti-war activists have done it.

But they didn't do it from a place of comfort. It's very hard to make positive changes to society while climbing a corporate ladder.

If you are too scared to disturb the comfort of your current life, and you think the ballot box is all you have control of, then you are the exact type of person I described in my original post. And it's not an insult to you. It's an insult to an entire generation.

Re: Turing CEO Defends $750 Pill in Reddit AMA

#54

Post by redblacktree »

cma wrote: post #35
FireBeyond wrote: post #3

What a slimy piece of crap: "People hate because they think I'm charging people $750 per pill even though it costs patients less than $10 out of their pocket" No. People hate because you ARE charging $750 per pill. They may only have to pay $10 out of pocket immediately, but one way or another, through co-pays, deductibles, premiums, opportunity cost when employers pay premiums, patients ARE paying $750 per pill. I h…

Maybe we need a charity that builds a research war chest to threaten companies like this with redevelopment. It costs a lot to replicate a pill and go through the FDA hoops, and once a private company does, the price just gets competed down to the point where it doesn't cover the redevelopment costs. Instead, a charity doesn't have to take profit into consideration and can just threaten: drop your price or we'll pers…

I like this idea. Where do I donate?

Re: Turing CEO Defends $750 Pill in Reddit AMA

#55

Post by astazangasta »

carbonatedmilk wrote: post #52
astazangasta wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not insurance. First of all insurance companies are not that good at shielding patients from costs; most people have deductibles and out of network expenses if they even have insurance at all. Second, even with insurance medical bankruptcy is rampant (the main cause of bankruptcy). Third, insurance companies have an obvious incentive to lower costs, it means they make more profit. They just don't have…

This isn't a story of drug company overreach, it's about how your government has driven the costs of compliance so high that it's not worth making a drug unless you can extract monopoly rent from it. The drug (pyrimethamine) has been in the public domain for more than 30 years, but in the US the government imposed costs mean that it wasn't (until now) worthwhile for another manufacturer to go through the process of U…

This argument is hard to buy when pharma has been turning 20% profits in the US for decades, far and away above any industry. Boohoo, compliance is obviously so onerous for them, wah.

Re: Turing CEO Defends $750 Pill in Reddit AMA

#56

Post by codemac »

chimeracoder wrote: post #33
codemac wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have to establish a market?

By definition, it's a market if there are two or more entities exchanging scarce goods or services. Medical care is a scarce good, medical research is a scarce good, and money is a scarce good, so it's a market, no matter how we structure it. If one (or both) of those parties is a sovereign state, or if we set arbitrary restrictions on the price and/or quantities traded, that doesn't change the fact that it's a marke…

That's a much broader definition for the word market than I generally use. Thank you for the explanation.
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