4 ms·

> Valeant I know that name. Valeant doesn't do any r&d. Their entire business model is to buy up rights to, or manufacture drugs that are supply limited, and r

> Valeant I know that name. Valeant doesn't do any r&d. Their entire business model is to buy up rights to, or manufacture drugs that are supply limited, and ratchet up the prices to the maximum that the market will permit. They typically end up selling these drugs at 100k-10m times higher than the cost to manufacture. They've also ceased manufacture of several life-saving drugs because the profit margins weren't high enough for their model. I am anti death penalty, but I would make an exception for the people who run the likes of Valeant. Profiteering off people with rare diseases belongs in a lower ring of hell than serial murder.

navigatesol 7y ago
>I am anti death penalty, but I would make an exception for the people who run the likes of Valeant. Amazing how many times on this forum I've read people suggesting people should be killed for what are, at this point, nothing but alleged crimes. Where does such an inhumane mindset come from? Hypocrisy?
- kuzehanka 7y ago
  Moral thought experiment: who do you think deserves a greater punishment - a drug addict who stabbed your child during a high, or a CEO who knowingly prevented your child and hundreds of others from being able to afford the only life-critical medicine available in order to maximise their profits, even though the cost to manufacture that medicine is 1/100000th of what it was being sold at? This isn't hypothetical, GP is talking about a treatment that went from ~$200/mo to ~$43k/mo simply because a bunch of heartless assholes figured that was the point of max profit even if it ruins the lives of a bunch of people and kills a bunch more. Is my viewpoint hypocrisy? I don't think so. Your comment seems to be centred around the alleged part, and I also strongly oppose the death penalty because of the false-positive rate of convictions. But take an hour out of your life to study Valeant and its leadership, and come back and tell me that you believe that there is room for error in their motive or the outcome of their actions. These are people who have found loopholes in the law and have grossly crossed any imaginable ethical boundaries. The only contentious part of my viewpoint is that I believe ethics supersedes law, and the heads of Valeant have technically complied with the law despite falling to the lowest low of ethics. These people are gaming the system at a level that most hard convicts wouldn't consider. I upvoted your comment, it is a good avenue of discussion.
  - dorgo 7y ago
    >These are people who have found loopholes in the law and have grossly crossed any imaginable ethical boundaries. I think in my country there are laws against (translation: "racketeering"). It is selling goods/services to people in distress/danger for an unreasonable high price. There is no death sentence here, but also no loophole.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >who do you think deserves a greater punishment - a drug addict who stabbed your child during a high, or a CEO who knowingly prevented your child and hundreds of others from being able to afford the only life-critical medicine available in order to maximise their profits, even though the cost to manufacture that medicine is 1/100000th of what it was being sold at? First, you can look at intent. If a person stabs someone, then it usually means that they intended to directly hurt someone. If a CEO raises the prices of a drug, then it usually means that they intended to make more money. The harm it causes is collateral damage rather than the main intent. Second, a CEO controls/owns the production of the drug. They are not responsible before the public for the public having access to the drug. Private property means that they don't have to share if they don't want to. If this wasn't the case then where would you draw the line? We can all agree that asking for $43k for the treatment is outrageous and scummy, but where do you draw the line? $10k? $5k? $1k? $500? Another question: if they had stopped producing the drug altogether then would that have been morally better in your opinion? Obviously these price increases are ridiculous and unacceptable, but I don't see how you fix this without the government requiring that a drug company must supply a certain drug that they started making for X amount of time and in Y amount.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- objectivetruth 7y ago
  The poster said "death penalty" which implies a result of due process, so at that point the crimes are no longer "alleged." The mindset comes from reading Yet Another Article about hundreds or thousands of their fellow humans dying painful and unnecessary deaths, strictly for corporate profits. After reading enough of those articles, many people with empathy view the people who profit off of this system as inhuman and vile. These otherwise-empathetic people might even view judicially executing "profits over people" executives as a rational decision, in order to prevent them from killing even more innocents. So there's your explanation, no hypocrisy needed. Well, no more than any of us humans exhibits in our shades-of-gray lives. Stuff gets messy when we step outside of the code editor. There was a movie called "John Q" a while back, about a desperate gunman who takes over a hospital in an attempt to force doctors to save his child, who would otherwise not be treated due to the expense. The plot probably baffles any Europeans reading this. I'm honestly amazed that situation doesn't happen more often: thousands of Americans die every year due to the inability to afford or access healthcare and that leaves tens of thousands of armed, grief-stricken relatives living in the same cities as pharma and insurance company CEOs.
xtracto 7y ago
Oooh, That named sounded very familiar to me (no being from the USA) and I just remembered why: https://www.gq.com/story/netflix-dirty-money https://www.gq.com/story/netflix-dirty-money

navigatesol 7y ago

>I am anti death penalty, but I would make an exception for the people who run the likes of Valeant. Amazing how many times on this forum I've read people suggesting people should be killed for what are, at this point, nothing but alleged crimes. Where does such an inhumane mindset come from? Hypocrisy?

kuzehanka 7y ago
Moral thought experiment: who do you think deserves a greater punishment - a drug addict who stabbed your child during a high, or a CEO who knowingly prevented your child and hundreds of others from being able to afford the only life-critical medicine available in order to maximise their profits, even though the cost to manufacture that medicine is 1/100000th of what it was being sold at? This isn't hypothetical, GP is talking about a treatment that went from ~$200/mo to ~$43k/mo simply because a bunch of heartless assholes figured that was the point of max profit even if it ruins the lives of a bunch of people and kills a bunch more. Is my viewpoint hypocrisy? I don't think so. Your comment seems to be centred around the alleged part, and I also strongly oppose the death penalty because of the false-positive rate of convictions. But take an hour out of your life to study Valeant and its leadership, and come back and tell me that you believe that there is room for error in their motive or the outcome of their actions. These are people who have found loopholes in the law and have grossly crossed any imaginable ethical boundaries. The only contentious part of my viewpoint is that I believe ethics supersedes law, and the heads of Valeant have technically complied with the law despite falling to the lowest low of ethics. These people are gaming the system at a level that most hard convicts wouldn't consider. I upvoted your comment, it is a good avenue of discussion.
- dorgo 7y ago
  >These are people who have found loopholes in the law and have grossly crossed any imaginable ethical boundaries. I think in my country there are laws against (translation: "racketeering"). It is selling goods/services to people in distress/danger for an unreasonable high price. There is no death sentence here, but also no loophole.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >who do you think deserves a greater punishment - a drug addict who stabbed your child during a high, or a CEO who knowingly prevented your child and hundreds of others from being able to afford the only life-critical medicine available in order to maximise their profits, even though the cost to manufacture that medicine is 1/100000th of what it was being sold at? First, you can look at intent. If a person stabs someone, then it usually means that they intended to directly hurt someone. If a CEO raises the prices of a drug, then it usually means that they intended to make more money. The harm it causes is collateral damage rather than the main intent. Second, a CEO controls/owns the production of the drug. They are not responsible before the public for the public having access to the drug. Private property means that they don't have to share if they don't want to. If this wasn't the case then where would you draw the line? We can all agree that asking for $43k for the treatment is outrageous and scummy, but where do you draw the line? $10k? $5k? $1k? $500? Another question: if they had stopped producing the drug altogether then would that have been morally better in your opinion? Obviously these price increases are ridiculous and unacceptable, but I don't see how you fix this without the government requiring that a drug company must supply a certain drug that they started making for X amount of time and in Y amount.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
objectivetruth 7y ago
The poster said "death penalty" which implies a result of due process, so at that point the crimes are no longer "alleged." The mindset comes from reading Yet Another Article about hundreds or thousands of their fellow humans dying painful and unnecessary deaths, strictly for corporate profits. After reading enough of those articles, many people with empathy view the people who profit off of this system as inhuman and vile. These otherwise-empathetic people might even view judicially executing "profits over people" executives as a rational decision, in order to prevent them from killing even more innocents. So there's your explanation, no hypocrisy needed. Well, no more than any of us humans exhibits in our shades-of-gray lives. Stuff gets messy when we step outside of the code editor. There was a movie called "John Q" a while back, about a desperate gunman who takes over a hospital in an attempt to force doctors to save his child, who would otherwise not be treated due to the expense. The plot probably baffles any Europeans reading this. I'm honestly amazed that situation doesn't happen more often: thousands of Americans die every year due to the inability to afford or access healthcare and that leaves tens of thousands of armed, grief-stricken relatives living in the same cities as pharma and insurance company CEOs.

xtracto 7y ago

Oooh, That named sounded very familiar to me (no being from the USA) and I just remembered why: https://www.gq.com/story/netflix-dirty-money https://www.gq.com/story/netflix-dirty-money