WHAT’S THE POINT OF CURING DISEASES IF YOU CAN’T MAKE A BILLION DOLLARS DOING IT?
You all know by now about Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who acquired the rights to Daraprim (a drug that treats toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects people with compromised immune systems - i.e. AIDS sufferers), jacked up the price 5,000%, then had the nerve to be surprised at all the outrage.
Shkreli eventually caved (sort of) and agreed to lower the price of Daraprim, although by how much we don’t know yet. Still, the whole episode is worth a half-assed blog post, so here are a few comments from me:
1. Shkreli/Turing isn't the only company buying old, neglected drugs and turning them into costly “specialty” drugs.
2. Before Shkreli backed off, he basically doubled down and defended the price increase (even saying it was too low by his standards), saying the profits would go to R&D to improve the drug. But as The Atlantic has pointed out, it’s not that straightforward:
Medical research is extremely expensive. Except that most of the key innovation is still coming from academic medical centers, funded by taxpayers. Pharmaceutical companies then take that innovation and turn it into a marketable product. That costs money, but not billions of dollars. How anything could justify a drug costing hundreds or thousands of dollars-in the case of the hepatitis C medication Sovaldi, which costs $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment-while still clearing a 30-percent industry-wide profit margin is difficult to conceive. It might be easier to conceive if budgets were transparent. But, as Gregg Gonsalves, co-director of the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale Law School emphasized to me, no major pharmaceutical company has ever been willing to disclose how much it actually spends on research and development.
3. Check out this chart showing how US drug prices are way higher than in other countries, then spend some time pondering as to just why this is. (SPOILER: No, the answer is not Obamacare.)
4. Even if you have a really good and sound business reason to do something like this, you might want to convey that to the public in a way that doesn’t make you sound like an unapologetic greedy Wall Street dick - especially in an age where social media backlash can be harsh.
5. Put another way: you know you’ve probably overstepped the limits of acceptable unfettered capitalist greed when even Donald Trump calls yr sweet business deal and subsequent public response to critics a jackhole thing to do.
6. On the plus side, Shkreli has probably done more to revive the debate over the insane level of healthcare costs in America - as well as the questionable ethics of Wall Street - than anything Bernie Sanders could (and has) come up with. And with probably five times the media coverage.
Progress!
I guess.
It’s just business,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1545354.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Shkreli eventually caved (sort of) and agreed to lower the price of Daraprim, although by how much we don’t know yet. Still, the whole episode is worth a half-assed blog post, so here are a few comments from me:
1. Shkreli/Turing isn't the only company buying old, neglected drugs and turning them into costly “specialty” drugs.
2. Before Shkreli backed off, he basically doubled down and defended the price increase (even saying it was too low by his standards), saying the profits would go to R&D to improve the drug. But as The Atlantic has pointed out, it’s not that straightforward:
Medical research is extremely expensive. Except that most of the key innovation is still coming from academic medical centers, funded by taxpayers. Pharmaceutical companies then take that innovation and turn it into a marketable product. That costs money, but not billions of dollars. How anything could justify a drug costing hundreds or thousands of dollars-in the case of the hepatitis C medication Sovaldi, which costs $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment-while still clearing a 30-percent industry-wide profit margin is difficult to conceive. It might be easier to conceive if budgets were transparent. But, as Gregg Gonsalves, co-director of the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale Law School emphasized to me, no major pharmaceutical company has ever been willing to disclose how much it actually spends on research and development.
3. Check out this chart showing how US drug prices are way higher than in other countries, then spend some time pondering as to just why this is. (SPOILER: No, the answer is not Obamacare.)
4. Even if you have a really good and sound business reason to do something like this, you might want to convey that to the public in a way that doesn’t make you sound like an unapologetic greedy Wall Street dick - especially in an age where social media backlash can be harsh.
5. Put another way: you know you’ve probably overstepped the limits of acceptable unfettered capitalist greed when even Donald Trump calls yr sweet business deal and subsequent public response to critics a jackhole thing to do.
6. On the plus side, Shkreli has probably done more to revive the debate over the insane level of healthcare costs in America - as well as the questionable ethics of Wall Street - than anything Bernie Sanders could (and has) come up with. And with probably five times the media coverage.
Progress!
I guess.
It’s just business,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1545354.html. Please comment there using OpenID.