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Comment by eliben | Hacker News Reader

Thanks, so this is the missing information. The article misleadingly says the medication is decades-old, where actually the pen itself is patented.

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The patent is expired: https://www.google.com/patents/US4031893

Courtesy ceejayoz below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340464

Other posts have pointed out that companies have tried and failed to produce generics. Seems like a really broken patent system if the patent isn't descriptive enough to allow competitors to actually produce the product. Isn't the point of filing the patent to allow things to progress once the inventor has had their monopoly?

its to build upon it too

it is primarily to avoid redundancies

so why aren't there more case manufactures

For the same reason there were no competitors to daraprim before Martin Shkreli decided to be a complete ja. When the price is low enough that there's little profit to be had, nobody bothers competing because it's not worth the time, money, and effort to get FDA approval. When the price gets jacked up like that, you will find generics pop up quickly. The problem is the window between the price hike and when generics pop up can sometimes be years due to needing to get FDA approval.

In this case there was a competitor, but they recently had their product pulled from the market in an FDA recall. So Mylan decided: why not raise the price 600% (and rising) when it's a drug people HAVE to have.

Capitalism in action baby. Let's deregulate EVERYTHING!

If EVERYTHING were deregulated, the time, money, and effort to get FDA approval would also vanish along with this particular problem. Would other worse problems appear in its place? Maybe. But calling foul on free-market capitalism in the very most regulated market in the US is a bit disingenuous.

Hmmm... from your description, it sounds like the market is working, just not fast enough for everyone.

It's not worth it for a company to develop their own Epi-pen since profits are so low. Eventually enough drop out that one manufacturer raises the price. Significant profits result which attracts other competitors. Prices drop.

Would you just prefer the gov't to step in and set the price? What happens if companies decide it's not worth the effort? Have the gov't force them to produce the product?

> Would you just prefer the gov't to step in and set the price? What happens if companies decide it's not worth the effort? Have the gov't force them to produce the product?

Cut out the private market and have the government manufacture it directly.

Can you give me some examples where the gov't has come in as a manufacturer and it's actually gone well?

They've done pretty well in the power sector. One could argue that most power (electric) companies are really just state run shells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam

I don't know of any case in which the US government has attempted to fulfill the role of manufacturer; that does not mean we should not try.

Because there's no equivalent of the bioequivalence study that generic drugs go through. Even if it's an exact copy, making a generic medical device means you have to go through the same entire approval process that the original went through.

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