US pharmaceutical company defends 5,000% price increase

[barbos]

The good news is maybe now the government will get involved in negotiating drug prices.

Don't hold your breath.

 

[ksen]

At what point does this become criminally actionable?

How many people should have to die first because of this idiot's "muh proffitz"?

Spock would argue that sacrificing the one for the good of the many is the right course of action. Plus that might give pause to the other people currently engaging in this or thinking about engaging in this.

There isn't a case, because then every single drug company that charged more than a penny for a drug would be criminally liable.

doubtful

but nice slippery sloppiness!

 

[coloradoatheist]

There isn't a case, because then every single drug company that charged more than a penny for a drug would be criminally liable.

doubtful

but nice slippery sloppiness!

Are you the arbitrary setter of what a drug should cost?

 

[ksen]

You know why this is a US story?

Because no other country on the planet would allow this insanity.

- - - Updated - - -

There isn't a case, because then every single drug company that charged more than a penny for a drug would be criminally liable.

doubtful

but nice slippery sloppiness!

Are you the arbitrary setter of what a drug should cost?

Are you the arbitrary decider of what should be criminally actionable?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Martin Shkreli, just a fair warning. I'm not saying we are going to eat the rich, nor am I condoning eating the rich. But if we did hypothetically eat the rich, well... you'd be first.

At what point does this become criminally actionable?

How many people should have to die first because of this idiot's "muh proffitz"?

Spock would argue that sacrificing the one for the good of the many is the right course of action. Plus that might give pause to the other people currently engaging in this or thinking about engaging in this.

There isn't a case, because then every single drug company that charged more than a penny for a drug would be criminally liable.

Many drugs would fall into what is called the "gray" area. This is one of those Primetime Drama show levels of black and white.

 

[whichphilosophy]

The good news is maybe now the government will get involved in negotiating drug prices.

Don't hold your breath.

While not constantly interfering, the government should start investigating the pricing especially if it is market where only one or two have a full monopoly

 

[barbos]

Don't hold your breath.

While not constantly interfering, the government should start investigating the pricing especially if it is market where only one or two have a full monopoly

should != would

 

[Bomb#20]

And this, in a nutshell, is everything wrong with the mentality of the left. Everything must be controlled by the collective. Whenever anything bad happens in any activity that is 98% controlled by the collective and 2% controlled by an individual, always blame the 2% of individual control and crank up the collective control to 99.8%. Repeat until nothing bad happens.

Pyrimethamine is available in India for 5 cents a pill. If we had a free market then in the time since this story broke a dozen people would have loaded their suitcases with Indian pyrimethamine and flown it to America. But then, if we had a free market Shkreli would never have bought the "rights" in the first place. So why is all the bile directed at Shkreli and none of it at the thousands of identifiable legislators and unidentifiable apparatchiks who cooperate in throwing a person in jail for flying a suitcase full of Indian pyrimethamine to America?

Seems to be a lot of text to just say, "I support that piece of shit (sp)."

But it doesn't say that. It says something completely different from that. You do not have any reason to believe that it says what you say it says. In the event that you sincerely believe it means I support him then you are willfully deceiving yourself. You are making a false damaging claim about me with reckless disregard for the truth. You are doing it because you have correctly identified me as a political opponent and have decided on that basis that it doesn't matter if you libel me because your enemies aren't entitled to truthfulness.

A free market is very resilient against this sort of abuse. But people who dislike free markets as you and ksen do dismantled the free market in pharmaceuticals and replaced it with a hyperregulated system that is consequently fragile and easily susceptible to crackers like Shkreli who know how to spot vulnerabilities in the systems people like you create, and can invent ways to exploit them. And you have the gall to make sarcastic quips like "Yup, the free market will eventually take care of it", when there is no free market because your own allies got rid of it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I saw a post on facebook about this so I figured it was full of crap, being on Facebook and all.

People like this need to put themselves into a safe and dropped to the bottom of the ocean. The drug company had a 750% sale to production cost on it to begin with, and research hasn't exactly been needed for several decades for the drug 60+ year old drug. This is shit that idiot CEO's in television sitcoms on Television do, not real life.

And how much of that cost is liability? (I'm not justifying the huge increase, asking about the basic difference between cost and sales price.) I took that long ago (it's also an anti-malarial, I took it when traveling in the malaria zone) and had a pretty nasty reaction to it.

 

[Jayjay]

According to New York Times:

With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

I presume, that previously the reason why there were no generics was the low price vs. demand. And now the manufacturer figures that nobody would start making it because there just isn't enough money in it, and it can further slow it down by ensuring that there aren't enough samples available for clinical trials. While I could understand why law might forbid someone from bringing over a batch from India and selling it, why couldn't another pharmaceutical company do so for research purposes? That's bonkers.

 

[ksen]

Seems to be a lot of text to just say, "I support that piece of shit (sp)."

But it doesn't say that. It says something completely different from that. You do not have any reason to believe that it says what you say it says. In the event that you sincerely believe it means I support him then you are willfully deceiving yourself. You are making a false damaging claim about me with reckless disregard for the truth. You are doing it because you have correctly identified me as a political opponent and have decided on that basis that it doesn't matter if you libel me because your enemies aren't entitled to truthfulness.

A free market is very resilient against this sort of abuse. But people who dislike free markets as you and ksen do dismantled the free market in pharmaceuticals and replaced it with a hyperregulated system that is consequently fragile and easily susceptible to crackers like Shkreli who know how to spot vulnerabilities in the systems people like you create, and can invent ways to exploit them. And you have the gall to make sarcastic quips like "Yup, the free market will eventually take care of it", when there is no free market because your own allies got rid of it.

cry me a river

 

[ZiprHead]

The good news is maybe now the government will get involved in negotiating drug prices.

The POS in the OP knows that Medicare Part D will pay whatever his drug company charges because that's the way the conservative, drug company lap-dogs in congress designed it.

His mistake was being such an open asshat about it. He should have laid low and did his overcharging on the Q-T like the rest of the drug companies do.

 

[Axulus]

Seems to be a lot of text to just say, "I support that piece of shit (sp)."

But it doesn't say that. It says something completely different from that. You do not have any reason to believe that it says what you say it says. In the event that you sincerely believe it means I support him then you are willfully deceiving yourself. You are making a false damaging claim about me with reckless disregard for the truth. You are doing it because you have correctly identified me as a political opponent and have decided on that basis that it doesn't matter if you libel me because your enemies aren't entitled to truthfulness.

In other words, par for the course for JH

This thread is extremely ironic for the free market bashers, as the same time they rail against the free market, they support a law that says "you may not buy that drug from India for $.25/pill or Europe for $1-5/pill, or South America, or Mexico, we are forcing you to buy it from only domestic licenced producers, in which case for this drug we are forcing you to pay $750/pill."

 

[ksen]

But it doesn't say that. It says something completely different from that. You do not have any reason to believe that it says what you say it says. In the event that you sincerely believe it means I support him then you are willfully deceiving yourself. You are making a false damaging claim about me with reckless disregard for the truth. You are doing it because you have correctly identified me as a political opponent and have decided on that basis that it doesn't matter if you libel me because your enemies aren't entitled to truthfulness.

In other words, par for the course for JH

This thread is extremely ironic for the free market bashers, as the same time they rail against the free market, they support a law that says "you may not buy that drug from India for $.25/pill or Europe for $1-5/pill, or South America, or Mexico, we are forcing you to buy it from only domestic licenced producers, in which case for this drug we are forcing you to pay $750/pill."

We do?

 

[Axulus]

In other words, par for the course for JH

This thread is extremely ironic for the free market bashers, as the same time they rail against the free market, they support a law that says "you may not buy that drug from India for $.25/pill or Europe for $1-5/pill, or South America, or Mexico, we are forcing you to buy it from only domestic licenced producers, in which case for this drug we are forcing you to pay $750/pill."

We do?

With your bashing of the "free market" apparently so.

I've seen you talk about bringing out the gulag, but not a peep about allowing imports, which would be far more effective.

Not a peep from your heroes Bern and Liz about imports either. Just the same old leftist rhetoric of "investigations into gouging" and "we'll look into price caps", or other such bullshit.

 

[ksen]

We do?

With your bashing of the "free market" apparently so.

I've seen you talk about bringing out the gulag, but not a peep about allowing imports, which would be far more effective.

Not a peep from your heroes Bern and Liz about imports either. Just the same old leftist rhetoric of "investigations into gouging" and "we'll look into price caps", or other such bullshit.

Wow, you seem much more upset about this than about Shkreli . . . like you don't even care at all and don't see the problem.

 

[Axulus]

With your bashing of the "free market" apparently so.

I've seen you talk about bringing out the gulag, but not a peep about allowing imports, which would be far more effective.

Not a peep from your heroes Bern and Liz about imports either. Just the same old leftist rhetoric of "investigations into gouging" and "we'll look into price caps", or other such bullshit.

Wow, you seem much more upset about this than about Shkreli . . . like you don't even care at all and don't see the problem.

The ban on imports does FAR FAR more damage than a dozen Shkreli's could ever do. I'm surprised you can't see that. You are damn right I'm upset, especially when lies are spread that we have a free market in drugs and the problem is that we need to restrict this wide and open free market futher. What I can't figure out is why you are not upset about the import ban while this Shkreli get's all your attention? I guess its more fun to attack one's enemies than to actually fix the problem?

 

[ksen]

I guess its more fun to attack one's enemies than to actually fix the problem?

Duh, it's the internet.

We don't actually do anything in here to fix things. We just shitpost to each other to pass the time.

 

[bilby]

The regulations that prevent importing the stuff from India were not put in place for the fun of pissing off the free market evangelists; they have an important purpose, and they fulfil it well - most of the time.

If these regulations were all to be removed, then sure, this one asshole would be undercut by guys nipping over from India with a suitcase full of tablets. Whoopee.

But the cost of eliminating the loophole exploited by this one asshole would be to allow low quality, inadequately tested and counterfeit pharmaceuticals to flood the country.

There is a reason why the FDA was established; and it wasn't just that the powers that be wanted to piss off the libertarians - the US was full of dodgy crap masquerading as effective medicine, and people were dying as a result.

It is perfectly possible for a manufacturer outside the USA to start making this drug and exporting it to the US market. All they need to do is to ensure that their manufacturing facility meets the requirements of the US code of Good Manufacturing Practice for pharmaceuticals (cGMP); that their testing facilities meet the Good Laboratory practice rules; Then they can have the FDA inspect their plant and laboratories; they can develop a formulation and manufacturing process, and have that approved by the FDA; then they can start making tablets, and can apply for the relevant import and export permits (these are probably not required - if the supplier is in a country with MFN status, and as the pharmaceutical in question is not a potential drug of addiction). The entire process could easily be approved in a year, if the FDA decided to fast-track it; but would more likely take about two to five years.

Of course, if you don't mind opening the door to counterfeiters, the rules could be changed to make this whole process much easier; but when you consider how much easier it is to make a passable imitation of a packet of tablets than it is to make a passable imitation of a hundred dollar bill, it seems foolhardy to not have a very highly regulated supply chain that enables tracing of the finished tablets to a particular batch made in a particular factory to a defined, enforced method, with the whole process subject to random inspection by FDA officials without notice.

I think even the people who are at risk of death from Toxoplasmosis would rather pay hundreds of dollars per tablet than pay a few cents, if by doing so they avoid a significant probability that the tablet won't actually do anything at all (or will even be harmful), because it is a fake.

I used to export diabetes medication (Metformin) to China, and we would be sent back stuff that was damaged, or for which the patients had raised concerns, for refund. Fully half of the 'returns' were not, in fact, our product - they were local forgeries. The best of them contained 250mg of Metformin, labelled as 500mg tablets. The worst contained no Metformin at all, but were made of lactose and talc, often with worryingly high levels of contaminants such as arsenic.

That's the joy of the free market - Why waste money on expensive active ingredients, when you can get the same price for a tablet made from cheap sugar and talc?

 

[Jayjay]

It is perfectly possible for a manufacturer outside the USA to start making this drug and exporting it to the US market. All they need to do is to ensure that their manufacturing facility meets the requirements of the US code of Good Manufacturing Practice for pharmaceuticals (cGMP); that their testing facilities meet the Good Laboratory practice rules; Then they can have the FDA inspect their plant and laboratories; they can develop a formulation and manufacturing process, and have that approved by the FDA; then they can start making tablets, and can apply for the relevant import and export permits (these are probably not required - if the supplier is in a country with MFN status, and as the pharmaceutical in question is not a potential drug of addiction). The entire process could easily be approved in a year, if the FDA decided to fast-track it; but would more likely take about two to five years.

It wouldn't have to be manufactured outside US. The patents have expired, there is no reason the generic form couldn't be done completely within US borders. My understanding is that even the pills sold in India or Europe are made by the same company, and not generics. I could be wrong though.

The stumbling block seems to be that the process to ramp up production is too costly compared to the reward. Why go through 2-5 year certification process, only to produce a cheap generic drug that's only used by small number of patients? The only reason why Turing Pharmaceutical can sell it for $750 a pop is because nobody else is producing it, but for anyone else entering the market the expected price would go back to a few bucks.