Clinton's Tweet on High Drug Prices Sends Biotech Stocks Down | Hacker News Reader

Clinton's Tweet on High Drug Prices Sends Biotech Stocks Down

bloomberg.com

What's sad is that Clinton says she'll unveil a "new plan" for dealing with this. The law to deal with this is the Sherman Antitrust Act and it's been on the books for over 100 years.

Cornering the market on the supply of a drug where the market supply is restricted (any competitor wishing to reproduce it would have to demonstrate equivalence) then implementing a drastic subsequent price rise is a clear Section 1 violation of that law.

We don't need a "new plan to deal with this". What we need is a politician that will have the justice dept indict them, file a request for an injunction on the price point, and stop supporting policies that constrain market access.

IANAL, but having just googled and read section 1, it seems very vague and easy to lawyer your way out of a conviction.

If a prosecutor were to bring suit under section 1, what would their argument look like?

Anyone who's paid attention to biotech stocks in the last year or so knows that there is some very volatile movement. Anything related to thera-, pharma-, bio- has been swinging up and down wildly. I'd really like to know why it's been behaving like that.

So this story (not the Clinton tweet, about the drug price increase) has been everywhere today.

Why is this Clinton's fault?

I came here to note this to, but the NYT story (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/business/big-price-increas...) puts it in a broader background:

>A huge overnight price increase for an important tuberculosis drug has been rescinded after the company that acquired the drug gave it back to its previous owner under pressure, it was announced on Monday.

>However, outrage over a gigantic price increase for another drug spread into the political sphere on Monday, causing biotechnology stocks to fall broadly as investors worried about possible government action to control pharmaceutical prices. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index fell more than 4 percent.

>"Price-gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous," Hillary Rodham Clinton, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a tweet on Monday. She said she would announce a plan on Tuesday to deal with rising drug prices.

Basically, people were spooked by the prospect of regulation, which a major political candidate for President said she would be announcing tomorrow.

fault? Their stock dropping sounded pretty good to me.

"cop blamed for sending child molester to jail."

wow, I had the same reaction but had to think for a second.

Have we been trained to associate falling stock as always a bad thing?

Yes.

... except we're not talking about Turing's share price going down. We're talking about pharmaceutical stocks generally going down.

Article doesn't sound like it's blaming Clinton, as much as pointing out that the spotlight on the issue is causing markets to expect additional interference and thus lower returns. It's an emotional response.

Responding to increasing regulatory risks doesn't seem like a particularly emotional response.

They are responding to a chance of additional regulation from a political candidate that hasn't been elected yet. To me that's fear and fear is an emotion.

The fall didn't immediately follow people being assholes, it followed politicians saying they might do something about people being assholes.

I'm not sure I buy the idea it has anything to do with Clinton's tweet specifically. She's doesn't hold political office, and it's looking less and less likely by the day that she'll ever make it to the oval office.

I think I might have misread the article as the companies performance falling, not biotechs as a whole.

Knowing it was broader then that, It makes a bit more sense that the hit came after her comment around releasing her plan for pharmaceuticals.

Is it reasonable to accept causality here?

Deleted comment

Since he retired and his wife became a presidential candidate? Hillary is active on the world stage. Bill does some speaking, occasionally, but isn't that active otherwise; He doesn't make diplomatic gestures the way Jimmy Carter does, for example.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com