This has been getting a lot of coverage recently, and there are articles coming out now that the price of this drug...

This has been getting a lot of coverage recently, and there are articles coming out now that the price of this drug will be lowered, although who knows what that means. In any case, this person is a symptom, the problem is much wider. Witness the attempt to have Congressional hearings on why generic drugs, the savior of medication costs, have suddenly been rising exponentially in price now that they've established themselves as the standard (which only happened because of their supposed advantage of cheaper price). Why is the retail price on epi-pens, a life-saving medicine, as much as over $500 (without insurance) when the device has existed for many decades, and the drug itself (epinephrine/adrenalin) is over 100 years old? This is a critical discussion that needs to happen. If he's the flashpoint, so be it. Let's just hope the discussion doesn't go away or get brushed off as if it's just him.

P.S. I am torn about feeling that at least he's such an egotist that he was "honest". Had he done the usual political palavering, it's unlikely this would have gotten this much attention. Except I don't really feel that he was honest, per se. He just didn't keep up the usual facades because he thinks he's above it all. Plus, he's probably just going to say that he was still right, because lowering the price now is just a response to the market and good capitalism still. Ugh.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/23/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-and-the-very-american-debate-over-maximizing-profit/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/23/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-and-the-very-american-debate-over-maximizing-profit

Comments

  1. Josh SchoofSeptember 23, 2015 at 7:20 AM

    admittedly i am not fully educated on this topic, but my immediate thought is that if people are going to make the argument that having water supplied to their homes (as in by a utility company or city) is a basic human right, isnt medicine too?  

    the entire medical/insurance/pharmaceutical arena is FUBAR, and its really depressing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. F-L SilverSeptember 23, 2015 at 7:37 AM

    That's a different argument, although obviously related, but clarifying that would of course change the whole debate on cost and access.

    ReplyDelete
  3. John NovakSeptember 23, 2015 at 8:27 AM

    My understanding, possibly wrong, but based on Derek Lowe's writings, is that this specific case is an abuse of a relatively narrow loophole-- not narrow enough that you can't base a business on it and cause great suffering, but narrow enough that it doesn't apply everywhere. 

    I mean, this drug is something like 60 years old.  There's no way under ordinary circumstances it should be under patent protection.  Apparently, there's a sort of patent-like protection for drugs that are that old and have to be grandfathered in and brought into compliance with modern FDA standards... and that protection is apparently buyable and sellable.  

    I am fuzzy on many of the details, but that... strikes me as probably not what the people who wrote the laws had in mind, and maybe that loophole should be closed.  ("Maybe," meaning, find a way to slam it shut on this guy's fingers, as long as it doesn't make the drug so unprofitable no one will ever produce it.)

    http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/21/martin-shkreli-has-one-idea-and-its-a-bad-one

    (Lowe has more than that one column on the topic at that site.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. F-L SilverSeptember 23, 2015 at 11:19 AM

    Yeah, there's definitely some stuff like that out there, but I'm not expert on the legalities, either.

    ReplyDelete

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