The FDA has a good reputation and is a role model for agencies like EMA (Europe) or BfArM (Germany). My own knowledge about drug approval is rather limited - though I was IT guy for a CRO I was never involved in the legal and regulatory matters.
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This is why we need the right to buy medicine from other nations. A quick google search shows they cost about $2 per pill online. Even the $13 was price gouging.
edit to add: this was a UK pharmacy.
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No way. Too much money involved.
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Eminem is more compassionate than this piece of excrement.
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Does Martin Shkreli have the worlds most punchable face?
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Fired by the board, federal district court in Manhattan over embezzlement, angry investors. I think that the big dogs are already after him.
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WHAT AN ASSHOLE. Ā
gah.
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The guy is colluding, albeit with himself, to artificially raise the price of an effective monopoly drug. Is this legal?
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I canāt quite make out the logo on his polo shirt, is that Dickhead brand?
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Anything for a profit, anythingā¦
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Or punched in the face by @nemomeno, or myself.
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There was a CBC article in June regarding a life saving drug for a rare childhood illness that the manufacturer charges half a million a year for. The drug company will even assign you a PR team to petition your government for the payments. I think this is going to get worse before it gets better.
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I take Doxycycline and fortunately Iāve never had to pay more than the $10 my insurance plan dictates but I was not aware of these shenanigans until now. New levels of douchebaggery that was previously unknown.
Diane Shattuck filled a prescription in December for a generic
antibiotic called doxycycline. With insurance, she paid $4.30 for 60
pills at a CVS store in Orange.She returned at the end of
February to refill her prescription. This time, she was told her cost
for the drug would be about $165.
Mike DeAngelis, a CVS spokesman, blamed the problem on āa supplier shortageā involving Watsonās doxycycline.
The system shows that the average wholesale price of 100 doxycycline
pills made by Watson with a strength of 100 milligrams is $328.20. The
same number of doxycycline pills at the same strength made by Mylan cost
$1,314.83.
The FDA website has a huge list of drugs that are listed in āshort supplyā. I wonder how many of these are really the result of Free Market pricing?
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/drugshortages/default.cfm
http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2014/10/02/lawmakers-probe-staggering-price-hikes-for-generic-drugs/
A recent analysis, for instance, found that half of all generics sold through retailers
became more expensive over the past 12 months. And prices paid by
pharmacies more than doubled for one out of 11 generics. In some cases,
price hikes exceeded 1,000% and even topped 17,000%.
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Hereās an SEC filing against him, itās mind-boggling:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1438533/000119312515292581/d19898dex991.htm
Hereās a Class Action suit against him:
There are calls for the Feds to investigate him for shorting companies while pushing the FDA to block approvals:
http://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-filings/entry/us-attorney-investigate-short-seller-martin-shkreli
Heās fled the US and is living in Switzerland to avoid asset forfeiture.
So hereās to hoping he will wind up in prison, heās a young sociopath with a short track record long on criminal behavior.
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Well hereās something that āsmall governmentā will certainly helpā¦
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well the invisible fist of the market came up with the perfect solution in 2008 financial meltdownā¦ Dump the whole stinking mess on the taxpayersā¦ and then try to blame them for buying houses they couldnāt afford.
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My friend was reading this headline over my shoulder. Sheās a Quaker, and tends to ascribe to the philosophy of non-violence. Her remark was, āThis is amazingly un-Quakerly of me, but I understand why in the French Revolution, they killed people.ā
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Iām guessing it is one of those drugs that the number of users is so low that there wasnāt a market for a competitor to make a generic.
Now clearly there is room to out compete this twat, but as others pointed out, will it be back closer to the original price - or just less?
You know, while I am against true socialism (government control of industry) it seems to me this might be a good area for the government. Taking established drugs that have expired patents and making and selling them with a low mark up. They donāt have any R&D costs so they could keep it low, and actually make a small amount of money that could be used to subsidize some users.
This would be for this sort of drug and others that really are unprofitable for many drug companies to make, they just keep making it because they arenāt complete bastards, though some of them still bump up the costs to help them fuel other R&D. Sort of orphaned drugs.
Could also lead to the discovery of new off label uses for little used drugs.
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aw come on, the article says he admitted it cost $1 a pill, even with a 10x profit itās still only $10/pill
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Well thatās awfully cynical.
Generics in the US go through a process similar to that of the EU - proof of bioequivalence. It is the exact same requirement brand-name drugs go through upon reformulation.
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