Price-Gouging Pharma Bro Under Investigation

Apparently they are revoking that increase. Perhaps cos pharma bro doesn't want to be under investigation?

A US drug company that faced a backlash after raising the price of a drug used by Aids patients by over 5,000% has said it will lower the price.

www.bbc.co.uk...

That said, the article suggests it will still have a price tag geared toward "some profit".

a reply to: FamCore

he claims his medicine is for a very rare disease/condition and because of that lifesaving factor the pills are worth much much more than they were selling, now that 'overpriced meds' has reached alltime high, prices do need to be looked at, the entire healthcare/pharmaceutical industry needs to be investigated but wont be because it makes too much money for the shareholders, its all big business now, its sickening to think about

a reply to: AboveBoard

This is not the kind of person who should be allowed to sell medicine, and who makes an excellent case for regulation.

It seems to me that strict regulations are what allow these monopolies in medicine. The CDC makes it impossible to get any new drug approved without costing a huge amount of money and time. And patents allow big pharma to attack anyone else who tries to sell the same chemical structure, so they don't have any competition and they can set the prices to what ever they want instead of being subject to free market forces. Then you look at a place like India where they have not so many regulations and you see they are producing the same drugs and selling them for a fraction of the price. Obviously an entity like the CDC is required to test and validate new treatments but they make it way too hard for anyone other than big pharma. Having many businesses try to constantly undercut each other is essential to getting the lowest possible prices. It's actually illegal for businesses to conspire among one another and fix the price, so why should it be legal for one monopoly to fix the price at what ever they decide just because they don't have any competition?

a reply to: markymint

From that same source:

But he has now told ABC News: "We've agreed to lower the price on Daraprim to a point that is more affordable and is able to allow the company to make a profit, but a very small profit."

It occurs to me that was the plan all along. He increased the price to an astronomical value that caused the backlash. Then he decreases the price down to something apparently more reasonable in light of the exorbitant cost. So the drug goes from $13.50 up to $750 then back down to $99. Looks like a real bargain now!

Kind of reminds me of the young lady that tells her mom: "Hey Mom, I'm pregnant!" then after her mother freaks out, she says: "I'm just kidding! But, I did get a 'D' on my test."



-dex

originally posted by: TOYBEAR
I don't understand why we as a society aren't killing these people.
Why aren't we storming into their offices and throwing them out their windows
to plummet to their deaths. There are so many of these only this one likes
media attention is all. I would donate to the defense of any citizen that demonstrated
love for humanity by removing this cancer from our collective conscious.

-Toy the Bear

Another company will probably have a 10.00 generic competitor out soon, especially after all the news. Making even the 13.50 to high cost. I get the sentiment but if he never sells his medicine again after this because competition put him out of the market, that's probably the best and most realistic thing we can hope for.

If we took out everyone who did harm on a mass scale not only would we have no politicians left in the US, not sure we could find any candidates for about a decade.

a reply to: Reallyfolks

Another company will probably have a 10.00 generic competitor out soon, especially after all the news.

Not in America, not any time soon. To put out a competing product, it would have to go through FDA rigors, and the proprietary elements are held by this scum bag.

More than likely, what I see happening is that countries like Thailand will mass produce the drug, which is cheap and easy to make, and flood the global market with a cheaper product and flood the US market with knock-off, counterfeit drugs. They will be sold on the streets and at swap meets, may wind up on drugstore shelves, and maybe, in this case the feds might be inclined to look the other way.

This is the vicious circle that keeps US FDA approved medications so high.

A few things, makes me really sick, and people like him, makes me vomit.

I think it's pretty awesome that people like this basically have to respond to public opinion via social media now. This kinda price gouging is just sick and needed medical assistance itself, of which treatment was carried out over social media` in the form of public opinion.

You can pull the wool over a few eyes and even patients, but not the whole US.

For better or worse, regardless of my usage or lack there of via social media, it's how the world's conscience comes into play.


On another note, the way medicine works is the longer it's been out the cheaper it becomes. The fact that this guy bought the drug for his start up pharma company and then just raised it to be his cash cow was just a clear violation of human rights, doesn't matter if it's a written law or not, it's also just common sense to not make your company the most hated viewed entity of the day. That's just bad business.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Oh - I meant PRICE regulation, but I catch your points. On one hand, we don't want drugs that are suspect, so rigorous testing must be applied and duplicated, but on the other hand, we don't want medicine that is going to cost astronomical amounts of money and risk being unaffordable, thus risking lives.

It needs balance. Thank you for your post...

- AB

a reply to: DexterRiley

You may be right, though I think if he could have gotten away with the 5000% increase, he would have...

- AB

a reply to: Reallyfolks

LOL That's the truth.

-Toy the Bear

' Big pharma to find them.
Snake oil cures to bring them all
And in their sickness, bind them. '

a reply to: FamCore
i feel if the drug patent is over 50 years old anybody should be able to make it generically that would stop slime like this guy hell make patent on it good for only 15 years from first release

a reply to: FamCore

Well here is an example of capitalism gone bad. Or more specifically financialized capitalism.

This drug, I understand used to cost $1.00 per pill. At $13.50 per pill this must have been a money maker for the company that originally owned the pill. There doesn’t appear to be any patent rights so i suppose the $55,000,000.00 paid for the drug’s formula. Now all of a sudden this pill has obligations to it’s new owner. The drug now has to generate a return on investment. And if, as is likely, some loans were made to acquire the $55,000,000.00 interest will have to paid.(That’s right the banks get their cut.) The cost of doing business just went up and these extra costs have to be paid by somebody. You can see the man has overhead that has to covered. Gotta make a profit.

This exact move on your drinking water is the wet dream of a lot of large corporations. So bend over citizens, there’s money to made.

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder
It seems to me that strict regulations are what allow these monopolies in medicine. The CDC makes it impossible to get any new drug approved without costing a huge amount of money and time. And patents allow big pharma to attack anyone else who tries to sell the same chemical structure, so they don't have any competition and they can set the prices to what ever they want instead of being subject to free market forces. Then you look at a place like India where they have not so many regulations and you see they are producing the same drugs and selling them for a fraction of the price. Obviously an entity like the CDC is required to test and validate new treatments but they make it way too hard for anyone other than big pharma. Having many businesses try to constantly undercut each other is essential to getting the lowest possible prices. It's actually illegal for businesses to conspire among one another and fix the price, so why should it be legal for one monopoly to fix the price at what ever they decide just because they don't have any competition?

Do you know why India doesn't need regulations on medicine? They wait for our companies to produce the product, then they wait for our FDA to thoroughly test the drug and incur any expense of doing so. Once the drug is released Indian companies reverse engineer the chemical composition which isn't very hard to do, and then they sell their own knock off of the drug since they don't recognize our patent.

Here's the problem with most drugs. It costs an average of $2.6 billion to get a drug to market (including all the failed ones that don't make it), this cost is a necessity in ensuring medications are safe by testing them rigorously. Most medications however are only given to a few thousand new cases per year. Lets say an illness has 30,000 new cases every year which is about what Leukemia generates. A drug patent is typically good for 7 years on the market so that's 210,000 new cases that use the drug assuming it has 100% market share but that drug cost 2.6 billion. That comes out to ~$12,400 per person. In reality a drug won't have 100% market share because there's competing treatments and then there's the people who buy the knockoffs. If the drug only has 33% market share you're up to $38,000 for treatment and that's just for one drug.

Now, what this guy did isn't right the investment cost has already been recouped on the drug so the price should come way down but if we want any new medications to be developed, and if we want them to be safe we need to continue to pay high prices for them. The best way to bring the prices down would be to convince other nations to recognize our patents.

Well Folk's

a Photo is worth a thousand word does it not ?

what do you think his actions in these photos are ..









LOL Funny