6 ms·

Malaria person: please wpietri, help me. wpietri: No Sick person: please shkreli, help me. shkreli: Sure, for $500 At least in the second scenario

by harryh 9y ago

Malaria person: please wpietri, help me. wpietri: No Sick person: please shkreli, help me. shkreli: Sure, for $500 At least in the second scenario the person is being offered an option under which they get help. It sounds a lot better than the first scenario for the afflicted.

robrenaud 9y ago
Sick person: please moderately profitable pharma company, help me. moderately profitable pharma company: Sure, for $50 Sick person: please insanely profitable pharma company post shrekli, help me. insanely profitable pharma company post shrekli: Sure, for $5000
- harryh 9y ago
  Exactly. Same thing. Both voluntary business transactions subject to the same rules as any other voluntarily exchange. No one is obligated to sell any particular good or service for any particular price. I know a lot of people see this differently but I don't think they have an ethical leg to stand on. When it gets down to it they have no particular rule for fair pricing other than "that feels too high to me."
  - draugadrotten 9y ago
    > No one is obligated to sell any particular good or service for any particular price. Well, nobody was forcing him to sell goods or services for any particular price. He set the price and now he has to face the consequences.
    - notdonspaulding 9y ago
      "Nobody will force you to sell your goods for a particular price, but if you pick the wrong price, there will be consequences." Do you have some special definition of "force" that you are using which doesn't involve you deciding for someone else which course of action they will take and then making them take it at risk of "consequences"?
  - theobon 9y ago
    There are multiple cases where someone can be obligated to sell for a particular price. Eminent domain is the most obvious example but Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory Licensing [1] is more applicable. Patent laws creates a temporary monopoly. This monopoly needs to be regulated to prevent abuse. Avoiding extortionist pricing of patented medications seems like a reasonable area for regulation. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminat...
    - rayiner 9y ago
      But the patent on daraprim expired decades ago. It was a single source drug because there wasn’t enough money in the market for another manufacturer to make a competing alternative. There are something like 8,000 prescriptions a year.
      - wpietri 9y ago
        In which case that sounds like market failure to me, which is another excellent time for regulation. We do this all the time with other "natural monopolies".
  - wpietri 9y ago
    And yet, Harry, if you had bothered to read the link in my comment, you'd discover that there are laws against price gouging. Fair pricing can be tricky to determine. However, in Shkreli's case, his entire strategy was to take drugs where a fair price had already been determined by the market and then take advantage of supply constraints to raise the price drastically, by 20-50x. If you really can't tell the ethical difference between his behavior and normal business, I think you aren't trying hard enough.
    - harryh 9y ago
      And yet, William, if you had bothered to read the link in your comment, you'd discover in the "Opposition to laws against price gouging" section that there are numerous people who think these laws are bad and that they make some pretty good points. In the case of Shkreli and Daraprim the price change induced Imprimis to bring a new drug online which added strength and diversity to the marketplace which is what we expect to happen in a well functioning marketplace when parties work to maximize their own self interest.
      - wpietri 9y ago
        There's a big difference between "some pretty good points" and "don't have an ethical leg to stand on". If you're now acknowledging that there is in fact a reasonable case for anti-gouging, that's a step forward. Thanks. Sure, one of Shkreli's attempts to gouge was partially thwarted by a competitor. Were all of them? Is there any guarantee that all future gouging attempts would be equally pointless? Of course not. Because, your free-market fundamentalism aside, markets fail all the time. That's why to get well-functioning marketplaces we outlaw a great variety of market-harming behaviors. Including things like price gouging for things people need to survive. Markets are not ends in themselves. They exist, with extensive societal support, because they're a useful mechanism to provide a reasonable distribution of goods and services to humans in those societies. When parasitic actors use those mechanisms to cause societal harm, it's entirely reasonable to tinker with the mechanism.
dwild 9y ago
2012 - Malaria person: please dwild, help me. dwild: no 2017 - Malaria person: please dwild, help me. dwild: no 2012 - Sick person: please Daraprim, help me. Daraprim: Sure, for US$13.5 2017 - Sick person: please Daraprim, help me. shkreli: Sure, for US$750 You see the difference? With me, they stayed at the same level of help, none. In the second, he purposefully profited from the help they were getting from Daraprim. He removed something they had beforehand.
- rayiner 9y ago
  How is dwild still not strictly worse from a utilitarian point of view?
- btian 9y ago
  Yes I see the difference. Shkreli is charging more. What still better than dwild though. So maybe dwild should go to jail
- ecommerceguy 9y ago
  Gosh I wonder if a replacement was made for Daraprim.. >Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharmaceutical company that creates compounded drugs, released a $1 a pill alternative to , a toxoplasmosis treatment whose price skyrocketed by over 5,000% in recent months. >While the new pill is a boon for patients in need of treatment for the food-borne illness, especially those with weak immune systems like HIV/AIDS and cancer patients, the alternative drug is not an exact copy of Daraprim. >Imprimis’ pill is a combination of pyrimethamine—the sole ingredient in Daraprim—and leucovorin, a medicine that helps reverse the negative effects on bone marrow caused by the way pyrimethamine works in the body. The two medicines work synergistically and are recommended to be taken in tandem by the Centers for Disease Control. Leucovorin is often prescribed alongside Daraprim. Not only was the replacement cheaper, it was daraprim coupled with another drug to fight side effects of daraprim. The judge in this case has a history of using her bench as a bully pulpit. She claims that outside factors had 0 influence on her decision. I find that pretty hard to believe especially with her history. As for the cost increase I believe they were funding a non side effect version of the drug, which would probably be nice for alot of people. Bone marrow is something thats hard to live without. This will be overturned. So what if he's a trolling douchebag.

by harryh 9y ago

robrenaud 9y ago

Sick person: please moderately profitable pharma company, help me. moderately profitable pharma company: Sure, for $50 Sick person: please insanely profitable pharma company post shrekli, help me. insanely profitable pharma company post shrekli: Sure, for $5000

harryh 9y ago
Exactly. Same thing. Both voluntary business transactions subject to the same rules as any other voluntarily exchange. No one is obligated to sell any particular good or service for any particular price. I know a lot of people see this differently but I don't think they have an ethical leg to stand on. When it gets down to it they have no particular rule for fair pricing other than "that feels too high to me."
- draugadrotten 9y ago
  > No one is obligated to sell any particular good or service for any particular price. Well, nobody was forcing him to sell goods or services for any particular price. He set the price and now he has to face the consequences.
  - notdonspaulding 9y ago
    "Nobody will force you to sell your goods for a particular price, but if you pick the wrong price, there will be consequences." Do you have some special definition of "force" that you are using which doesn't involve you deciding for someone else which course of action they will take and then making them take it at risk of "consequences"?
- theobon 9y ago
  There are multiple cases where someone can be obligated to sell for a particular price. Eminent domain is the most obvious example but Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory Licensing [1] is more applicable. Patent laws creates a temporary monopoly. This monopoly needs to be regulated to prevent abuse. Avoiding extortionist pricing of patented medications seems like a reasonable area for regulation. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminat...
  - rayiner 9y ago
    But the patent on daraprim expired decades ago. It was a single source drug because there wasn’t enough money in the market for another manufacturer to make a competing alternative. There are something like 8,000 prescriptions a year.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      In which case that sounds like market failure to me, which is another excellent time for regulation. We do this all the time with other "natural monopolies".
- wpietri 9y ago
  And yet, Harry, if you had bothered to read the link in my comment, you'd discover that there are laws against price gouging. Fair pricing can be tricky to determine. However, in Shkreli's case, his entire strategy was to take drugs where a fair price had already been determined by the market and then take advantage of supply constraints to raise the price drastically, by 20-50x. If you really can't tell the ethical difference between his behavior and normal business, I think you aren't trying hard enough.
  - harryh 9y ago
    And yet, William, if you had bothered to read the link in your comment, you'd discover in the "Opposition to laws against price gouging" section that there are numerous people who think these laws are bad and that they make some pretty good points. In the case of Shkreli and Daraprim the price change induced Imprimis to bring a new drug online which added strength and diversity to the marketplace which is what we expect to happen in a well functioning marketplace when parties work to maximize their own self interest.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      There's a big difference between "some pretty good points" and "don't have an ethical leg to stand on". If you're now acknowledging that there is in fact a reasonable case for anti-gouging, that's a step forward. Thanks. Sure, one of Shkreli's attempts to gouge was partially thwarted by a competitor. Were all of them? Is there any guarantee that all future gouging attempts would be equally pointless? Of course not. Because, your free-market fundamentalism aside, markets fail all the time. That's why to get well-functioning marketplaces we outlaw a great variety of market-harming behaviors. Including things like price gouging for things people need to survive. Markets are not ends in themselves. They exist, with extensive societal support, because they're a useful mechanism to provide a reasonable distribution of goods and services to humans in those societies. When parasitic actors use those mechanisms to cause societal harm, it's entirely reasonable to tinker with the mechanism.

dwild 9y ago

2012 - Malaria person: please dwild, help me. dwild: no 2017 - Malaria person: please dwild, help me. dwild: no 2012 - Sick person: please Daraprim, help me. Daraprim: Sure, for US$13.5 2017 - Sick person: please Daraprim, help me. shkreli: Sure, for US$750 You see the difference? With me, they stayed at the same level of help, none. In the second, he purposefully profited from the help they were getting from Daraprim. He removed something they had beforehand.

rayiner 9y ago
How is dwild still not strictly worse from a utilitarian point of view?
btian 9y ago
Yes I see the difference. Shkreli is charging more. What still better than dwild though. So maybe dwild should go to jail
ecommerceguy 9y ago
Gosh I wonder if a replacement was made for Daraprim.. >Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharmaceutical company that creates compounded drugs, released a $1 a pill alternative to , a toxoplasmosis treatment whose price skyrocketed by over 5,000% in recent months. >While the new pill is a boon for patients in need of treatment for the food-borne illness, especially those with weak immune systems like HIV/AIDS and cancer patients, the alternative drug is not an exact copy of Daraprim. >Imprimis’ pill is a combination of pyrimethamine—the sole ingredient in Daraprim—and leucovorin, a medicine that helps reverse the negative effects on bone marrow caused by the way pyrimethamine works in the body. The two medicines work synergistically and are recommended to be taken in tandem by the Centers for Disease Control. Leucovorin is often prescribed alongside Daraprim. Not only was the replacement cheaper, it was daraprim coupled with another drug to fight side effects of daraprim. The judge in this case has a history of using her bench as a bully pulpit. She claims that outside factors had 0 influence on her decision. I find that pretty hard to believe especially with her history. As for the cost increase I believe they were funding a non side effect version of the drug, which would probably be nice for alot of people. Bone marrow is something thats hard to live without. This will be overturned. So what if he's a trolling douchebag.