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It does say something depressing about our laws that he got sent to prison for the thing where he lied to rich people while still making them money rather than
by otalp 9y ago
It does say something depressing about our laws that he got sent to prison for the thing where he lied to rich people while still making them money rather than the thing where he extorted sick poor people...which is still fully legal even if the majority of society thinks it shouldn't.
- paulgb 9y agoAnother way to look at this is that he got a harsher sentence than he should have on the "stealing from the rich" part which is a crime, because he was so unpopular on the extorting the poor part which (sadly) isn't. Whether that's how we would like the system to function is, of course, up for debate.
- throwaway84742 9y agoHe didn’t “extort sick poor people”, he extorted insurance companies. If you couldn’t afford his drugs, he was offering them for free.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoAnd schools, and other places which, by law, were required to have Epi-pens on hand.
- saas_sam 9y agoYou should read things before posting.
- matte_black 9y agoSchools waste disgusting amounts of taxpayer money overpaying for things all the time. What’s a couple more dollars to the books?
- throwahey 9y agoI think you are confused, Shkreli's company owned retrophin, the toxoplasmosis drug, not epi-pen's. And as the parent commenter said, he was charging insurance companies alone, and claimed the drug was only used by a few hundred people.
- hourislate 9y agoI suspect that will be an unpopular fact although true. He was made an example of by Insurance companies and politicians. You have to remember Shkreli is very connected on Wall St and can call Soros et al friends. I am of the opinion that the Judge was also biased in this case. She had a disdain for him from the beginning. Junk away ...LOL....
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jjoonathan 9y agoInsurance premiums are pricing more and more people out of the market and that trend is driven by this sort of behavior. I'm glad that Shkreli felt obligated to help the people who could directly attribute their suffering to him, but he's still a jerk who extorts sick people.
- MrFantastic 9y agoSo do Health Care insurance companies. People don't realize how broken that system is until they or someone they know gets really sick.
- jpttsn 9y agoAlternatively, life is sometimes a sad story, and once it happens to someone they know people start looking for systems to blame.
- MaybiusStrip 9y agoYou do realize that insurance companies have to charge people more money than they spend in order to be profitable, right? Exorbitant drug costs is just another one of the factors that price poor people out of insurance, which is actually a much worse outcome than simply denying access to that specific drug.
- juliangoldsmith 9y agoThe price of the drugs is amortized over everyone with insurance. The drug in question has a total potential audience of around 2000 people in the United States, if I remember correctly, so that means the cost of the treatment will be spread very widely. Also, the drug he raised the price on was a horrible 50-year-old drug. Shkreli raised the price with the explicit aim of getting funds to research a new drug, with less terrible side-effects.
- rainieri 9y agoNever mind the fact that he offered the drug for free to those in that 2000 group of people that couldn't afford it. People should read into why he really went to jail. The toxoplasmosis drug has very little to do with it and a lot of companies do the same with little repercussion.
- throwaway84742 9y agoThe drug he was selling is used to treat a pretty rare disease, so it made little to no effect on the overall cost of insurance. And even at a higher price it was a good deal to insurance companies who would have to spend massively more if this drug wasn’t available at all.
- random314 9y agoHe played a zero sum game where he profited by imposing an incremental tax on the buyers of health insurance, the common public.
- rayiner 9y agoNot it doesn’t. Our legal framework doesn’t oblige you to save someone’s life just because you have the means to do so. If it did, we’d all be in big trouble—for the cost of a fully loaded MacBook Pro, you could save someone from malaria in Africa. The fact that people think a particular unpopular thing shouldn’t be legal doesn’t change that. There are a lot of things people believe should be illegal that aren’t illegal, because that would conflict with higher principles of law. People are easily swayed by emotion; the law at least attempts to be rational.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoI don't think the outrage was ever about Shkreli not saving someone's life. It was about Shkreli making lots of money from people's suffering, after artificially inflating the price of a drug that he controlled. In other words, getting rich from increasing the amount of misery in this world.
- brucephillips 9y agoAFAIK, only the insurance companies paid his exorbitant prices.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoSchools and some other public places were also required to keep Epi-pens on hand, by law. Some of them did pay the exorbitant prices.
- brucephillips 9y agoShkreli did not increase epipen prices.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoIt's amazing to watch the amount of mental contortions you're going through. I guess it's very important for you to maintain the consistency of your current worldview, and seeing the likes of Shkreli in a favorable light is an integral part of that. Ayn Rand would be proud.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- brucephillips 9y agoIf you're going to complain, offer a solution. What should be illegal? Patents? Transferring patents?
- aetherson 9y agoIf you make it punishable by prison time to charge more than some unknowable fair amount of money to make drugs, then nobody will make drugs. If you make it not a crime to deceive investors and misuse their money, then rich people won't invest their money, they will keep it in vaults. I consider "a world in which people who don't want to risk prison are still able to make drugs" and "a world in which capital is invested instead of hoarded" to be noble goals.
- viraptor 9y ago> If you make it punishable by prison time to charge more than some unknowable fair amount of money to make drugs, then nobody will make drugs. That's not true. First because price gouging laws already exist, so it's not entirely unknowable - especially if this rule became a law. Second, because once it's known, it's like any other existing limit. If you pay people lower than minimal legal wage, you're liable - that hasn't stopped everyone from hiring.
- aetherson 9y agoPrice gouging laws are generally applied only during emergencies, and ones that aren't are not, to my knowledge, well-enforced or constitutionally tested.