3 ms·
Executive fired after opposing 5,000% drug price hike
- mtgx 11y agoIf you didn't have government-given monopolies that lasted 20 years and you allowed competition to come in from outside the country as well, this wouldn't happen. Trying to regulate every single drug's price is a fool's errand. Maybe you can stop these "5,000% hikes", but what about the 300% ones? The 80% ones? That happen simply because there's no competition.
- maxerickson 11y agodaraprim is not under a patent. The market for it is small and there was no FDA approved competitor, but there is no insurmountable barrier to entering the market for it. I guess it might be the case that FDA red tape was keeping other entrants from bothering with an alternative, I don't really understand the complaints about their generic approvals process well enough to have an opinion. The US Federal government could probably go further than fixing any regulatory hurdles and set up a program to incentivize/ensure production of drugs (especially inexpensive ones) that are valuable for small numbers of people. Such money would surely be well spent in comparison to many existing programs.
- HarryHirsch 11y agoThe thing is: the "FDA red tape" is justified but expensive, and the market is so small that it takes a long time to recover the initial outlays. One thing that could be done is subsidies for FDA-related expenses for orphan drugs.
- maxerickson 11y agoIf it is justified it isn't red tape.
- DrScump 11y agoI'm surprised that nobody here pointed out that this was another Martin Shkreli case, nor did USAT in its title choice.