Pharma price-gouger Martin Shkreli smirks at Congress, refuses to answer questions

[ficuswhisperer]

That almost beats out my previous idea for a Trump/Cosby ticket.

[anon26940528]

@nungesser

I’m going to assume you’re being facetious in actually directly blaming Barack Obama for Martin Shkreli hiking his pill prices to, in his own words, make a billion dollars.

But the president has the bully pulpit and real authority over the NIH. He’s not just an empty suit. At a certain point you blame the Sheriff when he doesn’t do anything to stop the local horse thief.

[nungesser]

If you can show me the emails where Shkreli dropped a line to the NIH and said “hey bros I want a yacht and coke and hookers so I’m gonna do the ol’ Ponzi Scheme on my own companies and buy patents on some old essential meds and make them insanely expensive and make a billion or so, is that cool?” then I’d agree. But, no. This was one douche gaming the system, and he got caught.

[anon26940528]

@nungesser

If you can show me the emails where Shkreli dropped a line to the NIH and said “hey bros I want a yacht and coke and hookers so I’m gonna do the ol’ Ponzi Scheme on my own companies and buy patents on some old essential meds and make them insanely expensive and make a billion or so, is that cool?” then I’d agree.

(Seriously, did you even read a single fucking word of what I wrote besides, “Thanks Obama?” It’s okay, he’s just someone with a D after his name. Not God.)

[anon73629133]

@lolipop_jones

All right, we know these drugs work. No testing needed. So are the FDA administrators being called up before Congress to explain why they don’t just approve the god damn applications?

You know what knee-jerk spouting of conservative small-government talking points gets you? Flint.

Profiteers can’t be trusted to get H2O right. No way public safety officials should rubber-stamp more complex compounds

[nungesser]

@ActionAbe

Seriously, did you even read a single fucking word of what I wrote

Of course I did. Your point was that the NIH has the power to potentially prevent what Shkreli did, but they failed to do so, leading to this situation.

I am disagreeing with your line of reasoning, and you’re responding by insulting me. Classy!

[nemomen]

So I might not really understanding things, but I thought the issue with pyrimethamine/Daraprim wasn’t that it was patented (it’s old and no longer patented) but there was only one vendor, so a generic mf’r could produce the drug, but nobody was, while Shkreli was gaming the FDA to put up hurdles for generics to get through trials. Imprimis announced not too long ago that they were releasing a version of pyrimethamine+leucovorin. There are probably cases where the NIH could use that power to approve other vendors for drugs under patent like the insane pricing Gilead used for the Hepatitis drug they bought and jacked prices up on, but how does that relate to Turing/Daraprim?

[anon15383236]

@ActionAbe

I’m going to disagree with you, and not to just be contrarian, but because of something I discovered today.

Dude, I already conceded the point that a lot of problems in the system (such as it is) make it easier for a scumbag like Shkreli to do what he did, and even likely that someone would do it. But I added a point that you’re now disagreeing with – “no one forced him to charge dying people $750 per pill.” Nothing you said in reply to me shows that he was forced to do so. Far as I can see, my point still stands – the scumbag did some scummy shit, and deserves some genuine and lengthy punishment for it. What exactly is it that you’re having a go at me about?

[clifyt]

@mototom

The charges of fraud are about the Ponzi scheme at his hedge fund. The hearings are about his price-gouging. These are two unrelated things.

Sooo…pretty much exactly what I said in my first comment. Gotcha. I’m glad you corrected me by telling me exactly what I said. Thank you.

@nemomen

What specifically did this Congress do that made Shkreli come up with his rather unique orphan drug scheme?

Congress has continually been loosening laws that allow companies to do these sorts of things, taking away consumer protection and giving protection to companies that want to protect profit. I live a few blocks away from Eli Lilly and get to hear all about this sort of thing every day…I mean, it is usually said in a much more positive manner as a lot of my friends (especially as a lot of my friends work in ‘life sciences’…I mean one of my undergrads was in biochem, so…yeah…it is still an option).

Hell, the TPP goes a long way to codify this in an international way…I ended up briefly dating a lawyer that worked for the UN who was in town to prevent Lilly from price gouging the third world for the only AIDS drug that gives a child in utero a chance at not developing the disease (the drug is cheap to manufacture, but Lilly wanted to shut down the companies making them in said third world). It is very Shkreli-like in its approach, but for some reason as its brown kids that are dying overseas, congress has no problem protecting this right and wanted nothing to do with redacting this portion of the TPP.

So yes, Congress is implicit in all of this…they just wanted to put on a show with someone that no one actually likes. As noted over and over here.

[anon68952647]

@PhoenixK

he’s pissed off the Wu Tang Clan as well as Congress at this point- let’s see who wipes it off his face first.

I still say Bill Murray is filming an epic reality hack.

[nemomen]

@clifyt

Congress has continually been loosening laws that allow companies to do these sorts of things

Which law did this Congress pass that allowed Shkreli to do what he did? The regulations he was exploiting were mostly decades old. If the Congress sees that there are problems with laws, wouldn’t it make sense for the legislature to look into this? If they make a mistake is it better that they ignore it? I’m not seeing the reason to complain about them looking into problems here. I have lots of reasons to complain about the Congress but I’m not getting why this would raise ire.

[anon68952647]

@ActionAbe

and this week’s issue had a brief article about how some members of congress wrote a letter to the NIH asking them to use a power that they have had since the 80s to license other companies to produce drugs that are currently under patent to other companies when a company is price-gouging.

There is a thing here where you very much imply some other motive for his behavior.

Your lack of explicit connecting of the dots, followed by mocking people with gentle expletives for not getting it is not going to cut it.

Please, do be explicit if you are implying he is up to some other thing with his behavior. I think I see where you are going, but it’s your point to make.

[mototom]

@clifyt

Sooo…pretty much exactly what I said in my first comment. Gotcha. I’m glad you corrected me by telling me exactly what I said

And yet you still claimed that the fraud case and the hearing were about the same company:

he was arrested on fraud charges – which were certainly about his time as CEO of the company they were investigating

Sorry if you were saying something different here and I’m not parsing it correctly.

[clifyt]

Yes…the fraud charges happened at the same time he was CEO. He has CONTINUALLY been defrauding others in the last several businesses and has been fired from two companies that he started as a result of defrauding these companies as well. However, the fraud with the hedgefund paid for the first pharm company, which he defrauded (though this is a civil suit right now, but is probably going to expand into the current criminal charges) and with the fraud from that paid for the next pharm company…which he was fired from with suggestions that he may have been using it as his own piggy bank once again but no lawsuits or criminal complaints have been filed from this…yet.

But yes…the fraud case SPECIFICALLY was about the hedgefund. And yes…the timeline of the fraud case certainly account for money spent from this during his time as CEO. CONGRESS on the other hand isn’t investigating his fraud…but they are using his bad behavior as an excuse to pillory him.

@nemomen

Which law did this Congress pass that allowed Shkreli to do what he did? The regulations he was exploiting were mostly decades old.

How many people in congress have been there for years?

R41545.pdf

Senate? On average 14 years, House? 10 years. Folks in senior leadership have been there a LOT longer. These folks have been around long enough to know that loosening regulation has consequences. And again, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was ratified by congress last year which is ONE example of SPECIFICALLY giving teeth to pharmaceutical manufacturers. Its about 2000 pages and there are a lot of industry protections in there.

[anon61221983]

Nope. Instantly punchable. Fuck this entitled douchecanoe.

[LDoBe]

Looks to me like Skreli is the kid from Aerials all grown up

[anon61221983]

Why are you trying to make me angry? Gawd, I want to punch that guy and I suck at punching!

[LDoBe]

I’m sure there’s a boxing gym or dojo in town that’d be happy to teach you proper face-punching technique.

[hello_friends]

This is an interesting claim that I don’t follow.

[anon61221983]

I should do that, actually. I’m not as fit as I could be.