4 ms·
> There really is no reason this drug should cost more than a few dollars. Laboratory testing, animal trials, human trials, efficacy studies, FDA approval, lia
by rplst8 10y ago
> There really is no reason this drug should cost more than a few dollars.
Laboratory testing, animal trials, human trials, efficacy studies, FDA approval, liability insurance, etc. etc. etc.
- wodencafe 10y agoHow can you justify a 2,700% price increase in 2 years?
- maxerickson 10y agoIt's at least possible that the pricing set by the previous owner of the production line was altruistic. This would be a much more interesting discussion if we had access to the actual costs involved, but alas.
- refurb 10y agoHere is a possible scenario (not saying it applies here)... There are substantial fixed costs for manufacturing a drug. The more volume you sell, the lower the total cost per unit since fixed costs get spread across a greater number of units. As volume drops, profitability eventually goes negative, so the price needs to rise for that drug to stay on the market.
- daodedickinson 10y agoWell, that's not much more than the price increase in my health insurance over the past 4-5 years. One part you can call greed, but the other part is that price control attempts unique to the health care industry cause all sorts costs to be shifted into not-logically-related places. On top of that, more and more in the US you have people successfully illegally buying their prescriptions online or legally getting them from fewer peaks of the long-tail distribution. The big cost for a pharmacy is labor and their only place to recoup costs is marking up prescription costs so I have seen them make the decision to up prices to try to avoid laying off people due to sales lost to economic centralization. I wouldn't be surprised that the company in OPs post simply has a far less profitable business and this is one of the few paths they see to keeping their business and employees afloat.
- Spooky23 10y agoProfiteering, retail monopoly, greed, etc...
- harryh 10y agoWhile your explanation and rplst8's are both true, rplst8's is far more useful. When a plane crashes one person might conduct an investigation and determine that it was due to a faulty weld in the wing and that quality control should be rethought to prevent the problem from happening again. Another might simply say that it was gravity's fault. After all gravity was what caused the plane to plunge to the ground after the wing failed. Both explanations are true but one is useful and one is not. Greed, like gravity, isn't going anywhere. It's up to society, and airplane designers, to build systems that work in the face of adversity.
- Spooky23 10y agoProfiteering is when run of the mill greed crosses the moral hazard line in a spectrum of greed. A businessman seeking to acquire obscure companies in order to exploit the sick isn't following some force of nature, he's a disgusting human being. It's no different than swindling refugees or the elderly. People who do this should be socially shunned, and the government should provide grants or free credit to encourage others to manufacture drugs like this.
- rgejman 10y agoThis is a very old drug. All of its relevant properties have been studied for decades.
- refurb 10y agoThere is substantial on-going costs to manufacturer a drug even if you're not doing clinical trials. I agree that this particular drug's price is inflated, but you can't compare the cost of a bulk manufacturer chemical to an FDA approved drug.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]