And The Winner Is …
I know that you have been sitting on the edge of your chairs waiting to find out who would take the Gordon Gekko Golden Hemorrhoid Prize. This year Jamie Dimon is not going to be able win as newcomer, Martin Shkreli, has established a lead too substantial to overcome.
Starting in Australia: Daraprim drug price increased by more than 5,500% after being acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals
The price of a drug used to treat a life-threatening parasitic infection has increased from $US13.50 per tablet to $US750, after being acquired by a start-up founded by a former hedge fund investor.
Turing Pharmaceuticals, founded by 32-year-old Martin Shkreli, acquired the drug Daraprim in August for $55 million and shortly raised the price of the treatment.
…“This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business,” Mr Shkreli said.
He said Daraprim was “still underpriced” in comparison to other drugs used to treat rare diseases, adding that many patients used the drug for less than a year.
“This is still one of the smallest pharmaceutical products in the world,” he said.
The BBC coverage includes the fact that the manufacturing cost is $1.00.
The Canadians provide an update:
Turing Pharmaceuticals heard the protests, Martin Shkreli said, and the company has “agreed to lower the price of Daraprim to a point that is more affordable,” ABC News reported Tuesday evening.
The price of Daraprim, a generic drug that has been around for decades and is used to treat a potentially deadly infection called toxoplasmosis, jumped from $13.50 US per pill to $750 per pill since the New York City-based company acquired the rights to the drug in August.
This drug is generic and has been around since the 1950s. It is used in the treatment of parasitic infections in people who have compromised immune systems, i.e. people with HIV, chemotherapy/radiation patients, as well as any number of medications, especially for arthritis, that reduce a person’s immune response.
At $13.50/pill and a $1.00/pill cost of manufacture, if you can’t make at least a 50% profit margin, you are seriously incompetent.
4 comments
Did you see the interview with this greasy-haired smirking sociopath? He was asked if he would reduce the price (i.e. provide charity) for patients who couldn’t afford the full price. He smirked and said, simply, “No.”
Now he’s hoping everybody forgets about him so he doesn’t have to keep this new promise. You’ll note he made this promise by press release, not in person. If he’d made it in person, he would have had a hard time keeping himself from smirking.
I get the feeling that he just discovered that there are governments that have a good deal more leeway in dealing with price gouging than the US. He wants to get back the purchase price with 100,000 pills.
If the “invisible hand” slapped him up the side of his head a few times, he might refocus on reality. I assume that he may have received calls from some insurance companies and major retailers about his pricing policy.
Shkreli is King Joffery from Game of Thrones. Immature, wantonly cruel, overprivileged, with a keen sense of self-entitlement, and a monster.
Whoa. That writer really doesn’t like Shkreli!
Neither apparently does the attorney general of New York or the Feds and they have him under investigation for past actions. He really has less value than pond scum. Based on remarks about him from the biotech companies it sounds like many of them would like to donate his body to science with death not being a prerequisite – but a goal.