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You may view it as sad. But I think two things are happening: 1. The price of the drug was artificially deflated. 2. The somewhat-free market is deciding how t

You may view it as sad. But I think two things are happening: 1. The price of the drug was artificially deflated. 2. The somewhat-free market is deciding how to handle the correction. If the market for this drug was interfered with and the price was not allowed to go up, who's to say the manufacturer couldn't just discontinue the product? Would that help?

tapia 11y ago
I have to tell you that free-market cannot be applied to every market. It doesn't work in education system and it certainly should not work in the health system. Of course nobody wants to die, and people would theoretically be willing to pay as much as possible to have a drug they need to survive. That doesn't mean that this drug has to have an extremely elevated price or not being produced at all if its non profitable. We are not talking about the new iphone here, but about drugs that people need to stay alive.
ascendantlogic 11y ago
I don't want "free market economics" applied to the pain and suffering of someone I love, especially if they're not independently wealthy. At what point does the happiness and wellbeing of people you care for outweigh someone ramping up their revenue stream in the name of capitalism?
shawn-furyan 11y ago
In large the drug market is inflated, not deflated, because so many consumers don't pay anywhere close to sticker price out of pocket. Accordingly, one has to be careful in ascribing typical free market motives to either supply or demand side actors. In this case, I think that with such price hikes, one would expect a further than observed decline in demand. We don't see this because so much of the consumer side is completely insensitive to price. Essentially more than half of the market spends as if they were multi-millionaires, and Turing is arbitraging this market inefficiency. I really think that typical free market mechanisms are completely overwhelmed in this case. Therefore it's impossible to say whether the long tail drugs that Turing is marketing would be considered under-priced in a free market. We can only say that in the current consumer-price-sensitivity short circuited market that the large pharma companies think that there are more profitable areas to put their energy than long tail drugs. And looking at it from their perspective, this seems fairly obvious. First off, these drugs represent a small part of the market. Also, even if they do covet Turing's margins, competing with Turing would diffuse the monopoly mechanism that enables Turing to secure these margins. The Nash equilibrium then would seem to be not to bother.
Zigurd 11y ago
Best satire on this thread.

tapia 11y ago

I have to tell you that free-market cannot be applied to every market. It doesn't work in education system and it certainly should not work in the health system. Of course nobody wants to die, and people would theoretically be willing to pay as much as possible to have a drug they need to survive. That doesn't mean that this drug has to have an extremely elevated price or not being produced at all if its non profitable. We are not talking about the new iphone here, but about drugs that people need to stay alive.

ascendantlogic 11y ago

I don't want "free market economics" applied to the pain and suffering of someone I love, especially if they're not independently wealthy. At what point does the happiness and wellbeing of people you care for outweigh someone ramping up their revenue stream in the name of capitalism?

shawn-furyan 11y ago

In large the drug market is inflated, not deflated, because so many consumers don't pay anywhere close to sticker price out of pocket. Accordingly, one has to be careful in ascribing typical free market motives to either supply or demand side actors. In this case, I think that with such price hikes, one would expect a further than observed decline in demand. We don't see this because so much of the consumer side is completely insensitive to price. Essentially more than half of the market spends as if they were multi-millionaires, and Turing is arbitraging this market inefficiency. I really think that typical free market mechanisms are completely overwhelmed in this case. Therefore it's impossible to say whether the long tail drugs that Turing is marketing would be considered under-priced in a free market. We can only say that in the current consumer-price-sensitivity short circuited market that the large pharma companies think that there are more profitable areas to put their energy than long tail drugs. And looking at it from their perspective, this seems fairly obvious. First off, these drugs represent a small part of the market. Also, even if they do covet Turing's margins, competing with Turing would diffuse the monopoly mechanism that enables Turing to secure these margins. The Nash equilibrium then would seem to be not to bother.

Zigurd 11y ago

Best satire on this thread.