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

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

#61

Post by cheald »

beagle3 wrote: post #24
whistlecrackers wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. A free market is a solution. Naturally regulated markets satisfy customer demands at the lowest cost when compared to the results any other system.

Free markets are good a at lot of things, but staying free is not one of them. (Similarly for a democracy, by the way). A "naturally" regulated market eventually converges into one all-powerful monopoly player - it's a stable configuration that maximizes the profit for the owners of that monopoly. So you have to regulate this "freedom" away from disappearing - in the same way that GPL regulates BSD freedom away from…

> A "naturally" regulated market eventually converges into one all-powerful monopoly player - it's a stable configuration that maximizes the profit for the owners of that monopoly.

This is unsupported by any serious literature. Economic theory tells us that the only circumstance in which this happens is an industry prone to natural monopoly, which are generally those constrained by geography and enormous fixed infrastructure costs coupled with relatively constant marginal costs.

The "natural" long-run state of free markets is economic equilibrium, which necessarily includes competition to reduce marginal profits to around zero at the point that the amount supplied is equal to the amount demanded.

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

#62

Post by beagle3 »

rtl49 wrote: post #49
beagle3 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've posted it as a top level, but -- questcor controls the market for this drug after an 2012 purchase[0]. Here's your "more information". I wouldn't be surprised if Martin Shkreli got the idea for buying and hiking the DataPrim price after reading[0]. Expect a lot more of these things to happen. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/business/questcor-finds-pr...

If I'm not mistaken in detecting hostility from the scare quotes, I'd like to say that I don't believe it is unreasonable to expect that the journalist who wrote this article to provide that information before making appeals to emotion, rather than depending on commenters on news aggregators to disseminate it.

I would not say "hostility", but ... yes, (prior to your edit) I assumed you were actually defending the company.

But after your edit - I no longer think that. I just wonder where you got this idea about unbiased or factual journalism. I've never seen it happen, and even if they tried (which they don't), there's always a bias. Personally, I try to read the facts and do my own research on anything I find interesting. Sturgeon's law applies to journalism as well: 90% of everything is crud.

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

#63

Post by dragonwriter »

whistlecrackers wrote: post #7
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #3

I don't know much about pharmaceutical policy, but I have an idea. I would like to have it torn to shreds if it means we can have an idea of a more equitable process of creating medicine. 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? Manufact…

Yes. A free market is a solution. Naturally regulated markets satisfy customer demands at the lowest cost when compared to the results any other system.

> Naturally regulated markets

There is no such thing. "Free markets" presume both particular context (which is not present in any real state, though it can sometimes be approximated) and particular artificial regulation (particular, particular constructions of property rights.)

The idea that "naturally regulated markets" is a meaningful concept (much less a meaningful concept with some correspondence with "free markets") is absurd on its face.

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

#64

Post by dragonwriter »

mumumuyou2 wrote: post #38
beagle3 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets are good a at lot of things, but staying free is not one of them. (Similarly for a democracy, by the way). A "naturally" regulated market eventually converges into one all-powerful monopoly player - it's a stable configuration that maximizes the profit for the owners of that monopoly. So you have to regulate this "freedom" away from disappearing - in the same way that GPL regulates BSD freedom away from…

Coca Cola has been around for 129 years. How many centuries does this process take?

> Coca Cola has been around for 129 years. How many centuries does this process take?

The US market (like most real markets) is neither "naturally regulated" nor a libertarian "free market".

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

#65

Post by jbssm »

whistlecrackers wrote: post #7
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #3

I don't know much about pharmaceutical policy, but I have an idea. I would like to have it torn to shreds if it means we can have an idea of a more equitable process of creating medicine. 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? Manufact…

Yes. A free market is a solution. Naturally regulated markets satisfy customer demands at the lowest cost when compared to the results any other system.

All nice and dandy in theory, clearly disproven by practice.

Heath costs and medicine costs in Europe and Canada are lower than in the USA.

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

#66

Post by digikata »

DougWebb wrote: post #53
digikata wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if insurance companies would have some motivation to at least partially fund such a charity?

Not likely; insurance companies have no incentive or motivation to reduce the cost of healthcare. The more money that moves through the healthcare system, the more money that passes through the insurance company. That gives them power, giant transient account balances, and "too big to fail" status.

I agree in part. It seems like in practice it looks like insurance companies have little interest or capability to reduce healthcare costs. However, I don't understand your reasoning as to why. The high cost of drugs puts the health insurance companies in competition with drug companies for actually ending up with money in hand flowing through healthcare.

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

#67

Post by rtl49 »

beagle3 wrote: post #62
rtl49 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not mistaken in detecting hostility from the scare quotes, I'd like to say that I don't believe it is unreasonable to expect that the journalist who wrote this article to provide that information before making appeals to emotion, rather than depending on commenters on news aggregators to disseminate it.

I would not say "hostility", but ... yes, (prior to your edit) I assumed you were actually defending the company. But after your edit - I no longer think that. I just wonder where you got this idea about unbiased or factual journalism. I've never seen it happen, and even if they tried (which they don't), there's always a bias. Personally, I try to read the facts and do my own research on anything I find interesting.…

I actually was not arguing against bias in the article, rather the appeal to emotion and failure to seek a reasonable explanation before directing the reader to a conclusion. I wouldn't mind if it had taken a stance. Perhaps out of personal prejudice, I dislike the attempt to influence opinions without providing evidence, especially after the flagrant attempt to elicit empathy before such evidence could even have been presented. Take this tidbit:

"Mia Brooks of Salmon Arm, B.C., noticed the seizures in her son more than a month ago."

When Mia Brooks of Salmon Arm, B.C. first noticed seizures in her son is completely irrelevant to the subject of the article. I've given my time to read in the hope of forming an educated opinion on a topic of general social interest, and the first thing I encounter after reading a description of the disease is a story meant to induce feelings of sympathy for these unfortunate people. This kind of journalism is, in my opinion, manipulative and socially destructive, no matter how noble its author's intentions. I realize this is a common enough problem, but I don't feel apologetic about pointing out when I see it.

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

#68

Post by forrestthewoods »

themartorana wrote: post #16
rtl49 wrote: post #5

Without more information, I think the indignant tone and format of this article are unwarranted. Before we learn anything, we hear about the human toll: innocent babies will die, parents are distraught, and doctors are furious. But we're provided with no clear information on the reason for the price increase. "When Mallinckrodt acquired Questcor in 2014, Synacthen Depot was one of the products in the portfolio. It wa…

There exists a moral line, somewhere. In this case, parents of children with a rare, dangerous condition and the doctors that treat them find themselves on one side. If the price increase had been negotiated, or given fair warning, or was tied to any documentation of the cost of production, it would be much more tolerable - or at least understandable. Instead, this follows a recent trend of exploiting sick people for…

If the manufacturing cost is unsustainable expensive then who burdens the moral obligation to pay it? Me? You? That other guy who is over there and conveniently not in my backyard?

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

#70

Post by niels_olson »

Frondo wrote: post #39
themartorana wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There exists a moral line, somewhere. In this case, parents of children with a rare, dangerous condition and the doctors that treat them find themselves on one side. If the price increase had been negotiated, or given fair warning, or was tied to any documentation of the cost of production, it would be much more tolerable - or at least understandable. Instead, this follows a recent trend of exploiting sick people for…

Yeah, you know what it seems like to me? That old saying that you can't put a price on human life, that's what these pharma companies are testing now. "Will they pay, even if we raise the price by 20x?" That's not the kind of behavior I'd like to look back on for my own life, when I'm at the end of my days.

Every day is the last day you have to make a decision about the rest of your life.
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