3 ms·
I was thinking less of the reverse-engineering costs and more of the hard production costs. Equipment, personnel, production time, etc. Those are non-trivial co
by caseysoftware 11y ago
I was thinking less of the reverse-engineering costs and more of the hard production costs. Equipment, personnel, production time, etc. Those are non-trivial costs even if the complete formula and process is known.
- owen_griffiths 11y agoright, so the drug that was getting sales of 600k per year was probably not worth the hassle of maintaining a compliant manufacturing line. does that not suggest a price rise was valid?
- sdenton4 11y agoIt's a time-arbitrage problem: there's no one else producing it (thus no free market) so they get to charge literally whatever they want since they're the only manufacturers, for as long as it takes a competitor to build another competing production line. This is reprehensible. Once competition returns, the price drops again, and no one makes ludicrous profits anymore. But if the expected returns in competitive conditions are miniscule, there may not be sufficient incentive to produce a competitive market for this individual drug again.