3 ms·

Buying the rights to a series of obscure but lifesaving medications with no real substitutes and increasing their prices by anywhere from 5x to 56x is "nothing

Buying the rights to a series of obscure but lifesaving medications with no real substitutes and increasing their prices by anywhere from 5x to 56x is "nothing wrong"?

dnautics 6y ago
Many other pharma companies do this, it is an activity basically encouraged by the fda orphaned drug program. Also keep in mind the dynamics of how people pay for drugs in the us. For the most part the victim is insurance companies, and in a diluted fashion healthy americans forced to buy health insurance. If you're sick and financially needy, there are usually ways to obtain the drug without the 56x markup.
- uptown 6y ago
  "If you're sick and financially needy, there are usually ways to obtain the drug without the 56x markup." Which is subsidized by the customers of insurance companies that do pay the 56x markup, which are funded by the employers and individuals who pay for private insurance or tax dollars that pay for medicare. There's no free lunch.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    Is that not what I said?
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  You're mixing up your concepts here: orphaned drugs are those that would not be profitable to produce without a subsidy. The drugs Shkreli acquired were profitable and still produced, but out of patent (so they were cheap) and without an approved generic version (so there was no existing competition). Legally, it was above board, and financially, it was sensible regulatory arbitrage. Morally, though, it was reprehensible.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dnautics 6y ago
    Sorry you're right, I had the terminology wrong. It's abandoned, not orphaned, and the specific program is FDA NCIE. IIRC this program grants advertising exclusivity (weaker than patent exclusivity) as a carrot to give companies "IP protection-lite" in exchange for re-testing old drugs under the FDA phase flow.
- 1000units 6y ago
  Why shouldn't a pharmaceutical company with the expertise to identify and acquire an undervalued drug be rewarded? Aren't these precisely the people who deserve to be granted the privilege to allocate further capital? That's the whole point of capitalism, right? That's what HackerNews is all about? If there's some exceptional nuance here, we should explore this rigorously. Drug design isn't free. That R&D money is coming from somewhere. Where's it come from in your world?
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    Shkreli's company didn't "design" squat, it bought existing drugs where the patent period had already expired and the R&D costs were paid off. Also, funnily enough, in an actual capitalist environment you couldn't do this, because a competitor would immediately undercut you. However, the drugs market is heavily regulated, and Skhreli exploited the fact that it would take years and cost a lot of money for any putative competitor to get a generic version through FDA approvals.
    - 1000units 6y ago
      You're talking about this one drug in question, Daraprim. He actively funded the development of several new drugs you've never heard of, and sending Shkreli to prison was literally a crime against humanity. I don't think you know anything about Shkreli you haven't read in neatly packaged hit pieces.
      - howlgarnish 6y ago
        He pulled the same trick with Thiona, Chenodal, Vecamyl and probably more -- it was on the record as his own company Turing's strategy after all. As noted, this was all legal and I agree that he was railroaded to jail for essentially completely unrelated wrongdoings, but there's no universe where he's not a scumbag.
        1000units 6y ago
        This is a very odd characterization! Looking at Turing's 2014 10-K, I see this as a listed strategy: Focus on developing products to treat rare diseases characterized by severe unmet medical needs. I also see several preclinical programs and product candidates. You must have missed those. Odd case, very strange.
soperj 6y ago
When he used that money to fund the production of substitutes, and provided it for free to those who didn't have insurance, then how does your viewpoint change?
- briefcomment 6y ago
  Did he really?
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    And did that happen after or before the media outcry?
    - 1000units 6y ago
      The marginal cost of an additional course of the drug is negligible. What makes you think Shkreli would have ever withheld it from the uninsured? Lust for death? That'd be an odd quality for a pharma guy, he'd be in the wrong profession. You're thinking maybe mortician or mercenary.
1000units 6y ago
If you're such a champion of insurance companies, there are literally hundreds of personal injury attorneys (read: serial fraudsters) and their pet "doctors" who deserve to be sentenced to lifetimes of forced labor before Shkreli deserves to serve a second in prison (for securities fraud, btw). Where's the passion against ambulance chasers? Not enough bloggers writing hit pieces on 2nd rate bug-souled parasites? Why not? Why's the gifted Brooklyn immigrant from a war-torn country you've never heard of get all the heat? Because these scams have been going on forever. They're built into the system by the parasitizers whom it protects. It's "the way things work". If you catch onto the grift, if you even come close to it as an outsider, that's when they start making trouble for you. That's what happened with Shkreli. Send him to prison on some unrelated charge, drag him through the mud, then celebrate the defeat of your "villain". And totally miss the point. You changed nothing. You took out a scapegoat for people who are effectively real life caricatures of the imaginary villain they built up for you to strike down. You don't have a problem with Shkreli, you have a problem with our clown-world healthcare system. The real world doesn't run on warm sentiments you for whatever reason don't associate with Shkreli's face. It runs on THE RULE OF LAW, and you haven't even engaged it except in some contorted vengeful fashion against a wholly lawful (and might I say lofty-spirited) young man. Shkreli should be living free right now, and your complaints should be directed to your legislator.

Buying the rights to a series of obscure but lifesaving medications with no real substitutes and increasing their prices by anywhere from 5x to 56x is "nothing wrong"?

dnautics 6y ago

Many other pharma companies do this, it is an activity basically encouraged by the fda orphaned drug program. Also keep in mind the dynamics of how people pay for drugs in the us. For the most part the victim is insurance companies, and in a diluted fashion healthy americans forced to buy health insurance. If you're sick and financially needy, there are usually ways to obtain the drug without the 56x markup.

uptown 6y ago
"If you're sick and financially needy, there are usually ways to obtain the drug without the 56x markup." Which is subsidized by the customers of insurance companies that do pay the 56x markup, which are funded by the employers and individuals who pay for private insurance or tax dollars that pay for medicare. There's no free lunch.
- dnautics 6y ago
  Is that not what I said?
howlgarnish 6y ago
You're mixing up your concepts here: orphaned drugs are those that would not be profitable to produce without a subsidy. The drugs Shkreli acquired were profitable and still produced, but out of patent (so they were cheap) and without an approved generic version (so there was no existing competition). Legally, it was above board, and financially, it was sensible regulatory arbitrage. Morally, though, it was reprehensible.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dnautics 6y ago
  Sorry you're right, I had the terminology wrong. It's abandoned, not orphaned, and the specific program is FDA NCIE. IIRC this program grants advertising exclusivity (weaker than patent exclusivity) as a carrot to give companies "IP protection-lite" in exchange for re-testing old drugs under the FDA phase flow.
1000units 6y ago
Why shouldn't a pharmaceutical company with the expertise to identify and acquire an undervalued drug be rewarded? Aren't these precisely the people who deserve to be granted the privilege to allocate further capital? That's the whole point of capitalism, right? That's what HackerNews is all about? If there's some exceptional nuance here, we should explore this rigorously. Drug design isn't free. That R&D money is coming from somewhere. Where's it come from in your world?
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  Shkreli's company didn't "design" squat, it bought existing drugs where the patent period had already expired and the R&D costs were paid off. Also, funnily enough, in an actual capitalist environment you couldn't do this, because a competitor would immediately undercut you. However, the drugs market is heavily regulated, and Skhreli exploited the fact that it would take years and cost a lot of money for any putative competitor to get a generic version through FDA approvals.
  - 1000units 6y ago
    You're talking about this one drug in question, Daraprim. He actively funded the development of several new drugs you've never heard of, and sending Shkreli to prison was literally a crime against humanity. I don't think you know anything about Shkreli you haven't read in neatly packaged hit pieces.
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
      He pulled the same trick with Thiona, Chenodal, Vecamyl and probably more -- it was on the record as his own company Turing's strategy after all. As noted, this was all legal and I agree that he was railroaded to jail for essentially completely unrelated wrongdoings, but there's no universe where he's not a scumbag.
      - 1000units 6y ago
        This is a very odd characterization! Looking at Turing's 2014 10-K, I see this as a listed strategy: Focus on developing products to treat rare diseases characterized by severe unmet medical needs. I also see several preclinical programs and product candidates. You must have missed those. Odd case, very strange.

soperj 6y ago

When he used that money to fund the production of substitutes, and provided it for free to those who didn't have insurance, then how does your viewpoint change?

briefcomment 6y ago
Did he really?
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  And did that happen after or before the media outcry?
  - 1000units 6y ago
    The marginal cost of an additional course of the drug is negligible. What makes you think Shkreli would have ever withheld it from the uninsured? Lust for death? That'd be an odd quality for a pharma guy, he'd be in the wrong profession. You're thinking maybe mortician or mercenary.

1000units 6y ago

If you're such a champion of insurance companies, there are literally hundreds of personal injury attorneys (read: serial fraudsters) and their pet "doctors" who deserve to be sentenced to lifetimes of forced labor before Shkreli deserves to serve a second in prison (for securities fraud, btw). Where's the passion against ambulance chasers? Not enough bloggers writing hit pieces on 2nd rate bug-souled parasites? Why not? Why's the gifted Brooklyn immigrant from a war-torn country you've never heard of get all the heat? Because these scams have been going on forever. They're built into the system by the parasitizers whom it protects. It's "the way things work". If you catch onto the grift, if you even come close to it as an outsider, that's when they start making trouble for you. That's what happened with Shkreli. Send him to prison on some unrelated charge, drag him through the mud, then celebrate the defeat of your "villain". And totally miss the point. You changed nothing. You took out a scapegoat for people who are effectively real life caricatures of the imaginary villain they built up for you to strike down. You don't have a problem with Shkreli, you have a problem with our clown-world healthcare system. The real world doesn't run on warm sentiments you for whatever reason don't associate with Shkreli's face. It runs on THE RULE OF LAW, and you haven't even engaged it except in some contorted vengeful fashion against a wholly lawful (and might I say lofty-spirited) young man. Shkreli should be living free right now, and your complaints should be directed to your legislator.