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Ex-hedge funder buys rights to AIDS drug and raises price from $13.50 to $750 per pill

phocup

phocup

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My daily dose of "WTF is wrong with people" this morning.

I'm normally in favor of free economy .. but dang.

Daraprim is used for treating toxoplasmosis — an opportunistic parasitic infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems in babies and for people with compromised immune systems like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients — that sold for slightly over $1 a tablet several years ago. Prices have increased as the rights to the drug have been passed from one pharmaceutical company to the next, but nothing like the almost 5,500 percent increase since Shkreli acquired it.
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http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/ex-...-and-raises-price-from-13-50-to-750-per-pill/
 
Bet the huge price increase applies only within the US.

I guess more trips to Mexico or Canada for patients
 
This is Capitalism (Otherwise known as greed, in this form) at it's finest. :x
 
no no no all the people arguing in the other threads that the crazy healthcare costs in the us are just normal are right. greedy things like this have nothing to do with it. this is just good.
 
teg916 said:
I mean, it costs money to research a drug, so it is only fair that the drug maker charge as much as he feels like.
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...only this company does NO R&D. They did not develop this drug.

Not sure if you are serious, though.

This is on the same level as patent trolls.
 
teg916 said:
Let freedom ring!


I mean, it costs money to research a drug, so it is only fair that the drug maker charge as much as he feels like.
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He didn't research anything. He's a troll doing harm to many people suffering across the USA who have no access to anything else.

If there is a hell, this guy belongs in it.
 
teg916 said:
Let freedom ring!


I mean, it costs money to research a drug, so it is only fair that the drug maker charge as much as he feels like.
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Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.

The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” said Dr. Judith Aberg, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She said the price increase could force hospitals to use “alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy.”
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I don't know how the fuck he has a patent on a drug this old, but he sure as hell didn't do anything to develop it, bring it to market or anything else beneficial.
 
I don't think he has a patent. This compound can be a generic. It's just that the anti-parasitics market is so small and specialized, there is no other company that has made the investment to market a generic alternative.

His company just bought the rights and manufacturing line time from the one company that had the commercial version of the compound. It's quite apparent that this purchase was made with the intent to extort patients and healthcare providers. Even for a generic, it takes years for a company to get a product on the market. This guy knows he's got a couple of years to rob folks until another company decides to make a generic.
 
^^^ Now that makes more sense, given patent EOL in transition to generic.

Guy is PrimeDouche, fuck him.
 
link to the original NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/b...ncrease-in-a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html

Apparently this practice of jacking up older drugs has happened before :(.

Although some price increases have been caused by shortages, others have resulted from a business strategy of buying old neglected drugs and turning them into high-priced “specialty drugs.”

Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics. Scott Spencer, general manager of Rodelis, said the company needed to invest to make sure the supply of the drug remained reliable. He said the company provided the drug free to certain needy patients.

In August, two members of Congress investigating generic drug price increases wrote to Valeant Pharmaceuticals after that company acquired two heart drugs, Isuprel and Nitropress, from Marathon Pharmaceuticals and promptly raised their prices by 525 percent and 212 percent respectively. Marathon had acquired the drugs from another company in 2013 and had quintupled their prices, according to the lawmakers, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, and Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland.

Doxycycline, an antibiotic, went from $20 a bottle in October 2013 to $1,849 by April 2014, according to the two lawmakers.
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CoorsLight said:
I don't think he has a patent. This compound can be a generic. It's just that the anti-parasitics market is so small and specialized, there is no other company that has made the investment to market a generic alternative.

His company just bought the rights and manufacturing line time from the one company that had the commercial version of the compound. It's quite apparent that this purchase was made with the intent to extort patients and healthcare providers. Even for a generic, it takes years for a company to get a product on the market. This guy knows he's got a couple of years to rob folks until another company decides to make a generic.
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With a drug that's been around for that long, I'm assuming that the technology gains make it much easier to make than 62 years ago. Seems like a drug compounding company could easily undercut him and put him out of business pretty quickly.
 
Climber said:
With a drug that's been around for that long, I'm assuming that the technology gains make it much easier to make than 62 years ago. Seems like a drug compounding company could easily undercut him and put him out of business pretty quickly.
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It's not really that easy. While the generic drugmaker can skip a lot of studies including expensive clinical studies, they still have to develop their formulation, their supply chain, and prove equivalence with their manufacturing, chemistry controls, drug stability, and analytical methods. It takes years, and in the meantime, this guy gets to rob folks.
 
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