I would think, though, that these douchebags have proven there is demand enough to charge $700+ per dose, when $50 per dose is enough to cover costs. Surely some other pharmaceutical company could come along and undercut them at $699, and put downward pressure on the price. Maybe it’s too soon to have happened, but if it doesn’t happen in a reasonable time then I suspect some other mechanism is at work…
Looks like Dicrisci’s Twitter profile pic fully embraces the “I’m a huge douche” image, to a greater than his photoshopped CEO portrait:
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The church of Greed has so many faithful yet only a few know where to go to become an accepted member. If potential worshipers could only find this hidden cathedral most other churches would quickly fail. It’s a pity that all the members can’t be conveniently found in one roof. Perhaps it would make it easier for them to fall into their consumption mode and devour each other thus saving a bit of the world for us non believers. Wouldn’t it be an inspiring scene to watch them as the plate was past.
What a disgusting bunch of swine.
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So could a US patient fly to Aus, buy unsubsidised tabs for 340 AUD, and take the treatment while living in the country?
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Yup, although they’d need a prescription from a local GP.
Medicare is mostly only for permanent residents [1], but everyone gets the advantage of Medicare’s collective bargaining power.
[1] Citizens of some countries can access parts of Medicare:
https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/enablers/rhca-medical-care-visitors-australia
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Sure, it sounds reasonable. The problem is that you don’t just have some other pharmaceutical company coming along and deciding “hey we can make medication X for cheaper and undercut the competition”. You need to figure out how to synthesize the active ingredient, produce it at scale, and you still need to go through all kinds of FDA red tape.
Some drugs print money for pharmaceutical companies, like various antibiotics, SSRIs, painkillers, and so on. Other drugs, not so much.
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And yet, they go on and on about the driving force of cost hikes is the cost of R&D… go figure, I guess.
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The situation is so much worse than it appears in this article. See this piece in JAMA.
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Unfortunately, what you get may not be exactly what you want. Which would matter a Yuge! amount with a med/chemo drug.
Getting an imported version made overseas (say, European market with more market regulation) may be cheaper.
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Wow, it’s amazing nobody’s come in yet telling us how we’re all morons for not believing that a company is automatically justified in more than decupling the price of a drug they didn’t spend a dime on developing.
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And, I should think, easier to legally import.
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This isn’t fair to Microsoft, who got their start selling products they themselves actually developed and who still have a strong and active research arm. This DiCrisci person appears to be a complete parasite who has never contributed anything to society. (There’s another Floridian named Joseph DiCrisci who was in the courts this year for securities fraud. A relative?)
Um, didn’t Microsoft get its start selling IBM an OS, then instead of writing an OS for IBM just buy QDOS and stamp the Microsoft name on it?
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I think their BASIC interpreter came first.
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“And then they came for the cancer patients, but I was not a cancer patient…”
The sad truth is, my fellow Americans, that our government, the pharmaceutical companies, and health insurers are working very hard to kill us. And we’re letting them.
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<obviousman>
One thing is cost, another, value, and yet another, price. In an unregulated market, price can be whatever the market will bear, with an optimal price at the point of maximum profit.
Commerce in life-saving drugs should be done within a properly-regulated market, as the value of the drugs for the patient can be much higher than the cost, and sellers can be tempted to raise prices to reflect the value.
</obviousman>
In cases like this, I would invoke anti-trust laws, racketeering laws, or even to declare eminent domain and take the factories or the drugs, after paying adequate compensation that includes the cost and a reasonable profit. These guys are despicable.
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Good argument for socialized medicine.
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Yeah, they did. And it was first; the Holocaust began in Germany’s hospitals.
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