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But if you're unlucky enough to have a baby that gets toxoplasmosis, you're fucked. The people backing the insurance which is paying that new price are fucked. But it's OK that this is a net negative for society, because the company is now making a 'proper' amount profit off it, right?
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The outrage at Shkreli is misdirected. Be outraged at the system, not someone acting rationally within the system. If you're upset drugs are too expensive, argue and work towards non-profit manufacturing. If drugs aren't profitable, they cannot be manufactured. Equipment, technicians, supply chains, and FDA regulatory compliance all cost money.
Wow I had no idea. Source? If true I certainly am guilty of misdirected outrage.
"In one breath, he calls himself a capitalist and in the next an altruist—the latter because, he claims, his real goal is to invent new drugs for rare diseases. Turing recently announced discounts of Daraprim for hospitals, and Shkreli says that for people without insurance it will cost only $1 a pill. For everyone else, insurance, which he argues is paid for by corporate America’s profits, will cover the cost. “I’m like Robin Hood,” he continues. “I’m taking Walmart’s money and doing research for diseases no one cares about.”"
http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/25/news/companies/turing-pharma...
"Turing said it would offer smaller bottles of 30 tablets to make it easier and cheaper for hospitals to carry the drug, and free sample packages for doctors needing to treat patients in emergency situations. The company estimates that "nearly all patients will receive Daraprim for $10 or less out-of-pocket per prescription.
While Turing is dropping the price for hospitals, it is not reducing the list price of Daraprim at pharmacies, because that would not help patients, Retzlaff said."
https://www.thepharmaletter.com/article/turing-pharma-reduce...
"Additionally for the outpatient setting, Turing will continue to:
* Participate in federal and state programs such as Medicaid and the Section 340B discount program having costs as low as $1 per 100-pill bottle, which currently account for about two-thirds of Daraprim sales. (!!!)
* Commit to patients with commercial insurance that their out-of-pocket obligation will be no more than $10 per prescription when Turing's co-pay program is used.
* Contribute to Patient Services Inc (PSI), a longstanding independent charity that provides financial assistance for Medicare patients' cost-sharing requirements on toxoplasmosis therapies, consistent with PSI's advisory opinion from the HHS Office of Inspector General.
* Provide Daraprim free-of-charge to uninsured, qualified patients with demonstrated income at or below 500% of the federal poverty level through our Patient Assistance Program."
This is the core reason that Shkreli got raked over the coals. He went on television and clearly broadcast that he didn't care about the rules or conventions of the ruling class. He was going to make the noise he felt proper, and he was in a position with too much influence to tolerate such noise-making -- that's besides his failure to cave to their pressure to lower the price back down and/or provide some other form of damage control when faced with media pressure, as most executives would've (resulting in a win for insurance companies).
Shkreli was naive to believe that he could signal his non-compliant thought process without becoming a target for those who are seriously invested in maintaining the status quo. The people who work to maintain this careful balance between public exploitation and complacency immediately recognized it as something they couldn't tolerate and set up to paint him as the sniveling, greedy bad guy who liked watching babies die.
Everyone should pay attention. Anyone who does anything more complex than collecting a standard W2 paycheck can easily be brought up on a variety of white-collar charges (and those who just collect a paycheck can be brought up moderately easily).
Shkreli is an example of why you have to be careful what you say and can't just come out and let the cold hard truth do the talking for you. Spinmasters and assailants are lurking out there, and they will turn nasty quick if they interpret a threat.
Watch your back out there. Shkreli is a peer of many of us who read HN. It can happen to you, too.
No, society does though raised insurance premiums.
EDIT: The drug, per TFA, was profitable. Just not profitable enough for Shkreli et.al.
It's true that the system encourages this behavior through poorly designed incentives, but outrage and publicity is the only check on this. So the outrage is perfectly well-placed.
Yes, they are. They are permitted to raise premiums "as much as necessary" due to a lack of cost controls, and the ACA/Obamacare simply subsidizes insurance with little eye towards costs. They get their admin skim regardless. Your blame is misplaced.
If you want your drugs affordable, manufacture them without a profit motive (through a government sponsored entity, for example). Use government funding through the NIH, the NSF, and DARPA for drug development. Put cost controls in place and use Medicare as a single payer system. If you leave any room for profiting, someone will find a way to exploit it. That's capitalism.
Yes, absolutely. To the extent that "evil tycoons" exist in the real human world and are not just propagandist's caricatures, anyway.
Medical insurers provide near-zero tangible value and are the main reason that the medical system is FUBAR'd. I understand that there are many good people working for insurers because they need to put food on the table, and I sympathize with that, and I probably would take such employment myself if necessary.
But we should not pretend that medical insurers are good or that they are entitled to anything. The belief that they deserve a place in the economy is immensely destructive. They are paper pushers who leech from the providers administering medical care, the patients receiving it, and literally everyone in between, including the state and the patient's employer(s).
We do not have to accept medical insurers, nor pretend their role is legitimate. I personally believe most types of medical insurance should be immediately and completely outlawed.
This common apologetic ignores the real-world cost of infrastructure, overhead, and accruing a user-base that an existing company has already established.
It excuses irresponsibility and negligence of the public trust. Nobody would say, for instance, "corrupt politician? You're free to stage a revolution, overthrow the existing state, draft a constitution, establish a sovereign power and diplomatic ties with other states if you want"
No, we know how absurd and ridiculous that is, so we have tried to create reasonable mechanisms for dealing with political corruption through the ballot box and removing barriers to entry for legitimate challengers.
But in business, this trope is implying "You're free to abandon your career, study chemical engineering, get financing to start a lab, hire a large staff of experts, buy the machinery, run an advertising campaign, establish the customer base ..."
It changes the frame of reference from abuse and incompetence on important matters to essentially shaming people for not starting multiple successful industrial capitalist enterprises in their leisure time.
There needs to be more reasonable mechanisms for dealing with abuses of power then requiring such expensive and elaborate responses. Otherwise most abuses go unchallenged.
On the other hand, this trope also implies that you have to pay for all of this, and perphaps $13 is not a good price for the drug.
What is an appropriate price for this drug?
You say it's abuse and incompetence, but could it be that you're wrong and it's a rational decision?
And the point was about existing infrastructure. The drug existed, and made money, at $13, using paid for infrastructure that did other things, made other drugs as well, run by an existing staff that had other tasks.
You don't buy a car to drive 1 mile or start a restaurant to serve 1 meal.
Instead, an existing company should make a competitor, say Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, which did so in 2015 for $1.00 each.
This is fundamentally about abusing power and position for profit and saying others should get the same power and position to stop the abuse.
My only contention is that isn't reality and the world doesn't work that way.
Yet this logic can be applied to anything. Should food companies make healthy food cheaper at a loss so that more people get the nutrients they need and thus live longer?
Bid for Allergan Puts Valeant's Research and Development Cuts Under Scrutiny $53 Billion Bid Puts Focus on Strategy of Shedding Research Operations and Making Money Selling Products
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bid-for-allergan-puts-valeants-...