4 ms·

Shkreli has been treated pretty unfairly by the media

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
Shkreli is everything wrong with current-year capitalism condensed into one little weasel who looks so geeky even I want to stuff him in a locker. No, he isn't the problem, the system that enables him is. But he is an opportunistic piece of shit.
- artursapek 3y ago
  I feel like he's mistreated because of how he looks
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I mean that may be, but the dude also cranked the price of insulin for no reason beyond he could and it would make him richer. So like, good luck finding some sympathetic ears for him.
    - artursapek 3y ago
      Have you actually listened to him talk about it, or only read Forbes articles?
    - busterarm 3y ago
      Insulin? He didn't have anything to do with insulin. It was Daraprim/Pyrimethamine. It's used to treat toxoplasmosis. It's also been off-patent for over 40 years and another pharmaceutical could have made a generic but none thought it would be profitable enough to even bother.
      - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - artursapek 3y ago
        Really goes to show how uninformed these opinions of him are.
        busterarm 3y ago
        Why be informed when you can blindly hate and double down when presented with any information without any consequences?
        ToucanLoucan 3y ago
        I accepted your correction and reaffirmed he's still a piece of shit because jacking the price of any drugs for no reason apart from your ability to do so makes you a piece of shit. The specific drug in question may make you a smaller or larger piece of shit, but a piece of shit you remain. For that matter, not even isolated to drugs. Charging a higher price for the same product when you are already a ludicrously profitable entity for no reason is a shitty way to treat customers.
        busterarm 3y ago
        But there is a reason to increase the price of a drug. To fund research of new drugs. Also if you raise the price of an off-patent drug, other pharmaceuticals are incentivized to manufacture a generic to compete with you and bring your prices down. At the time nobody was touching it for 40 years. Keep in mind that this price is what was charged to insurers. Insurers negotiate the price back down. Uninsured patients up to 5x the federal poverty level were promised the drug for free. Pharma companies in the US will charge what insurance companies are willing to pay. It's not an issue of individual greed, it's an issue of a regulatory system and set of incentives that collectively are fucking you. There are far more expensive drugs out there than Daraprim with worse markups and nobody is identifying the CEO of those companies and calling them the most hated man on earth.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - busterarm 3y ago
    It's not that really. At least not the whole of it. It was just easy to tie him as a face to the kind of corporate entities that people hate. Also his position was much more vulnerable than other pharma executives who can afford to pay armies of PR teams, etc. He has a need for attention and a poor sense of self-preservation -- sort of like weev but without being a massive racist.
mmcgaha 3y ago
I have never heard this perspective. What are some examples of where he has been mischaracterized?
- artursapek 3y ago
  All pharma companies price gouge. His company was giving a lot of the drug away for free to people who couldn't afford it, and insurance companies were paying the higher cost in other cases. Shkreli was singled out because he's addicted to getting attention on the internet so he put it on himself, and he has an easy to make fun of physical appearance. If you actually watch his livestreams and listen to what he has to say instead of reading legacy media, you'd get a different perspective on him.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > All pharma companies price gouge. Perhaps, but only Shkreli decided to 10× his drug prices overnight. Or, as one person put it, "[Shkreli] is to a research-based company like a loan shark to a legitimate bank"
    - busterarm 3y ago
      The patent had expired on the drug four decades prior and no other pharmaceutical bothered to try and make it available. We really got the best outcome out of this stunt. He exposed real weaknesses in what we're doing and also the FDA process to market generics and instead of doing anything to fix it outside of the context of this one drug, we shot the messenger.

Shkreli is everything wrong with current-year capitalism condensed into one little weasel who looks so geeky even I want to stuff him in a locker. No, he isn't the problem, the system that enables him is. But he is an opportunistic piece of shit.

artursapek 3y ago
I feel like he's mistreated because of how he looks
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  I mean that may be, but the dude also cranked the price of insulin for no reason beyond he could and it would make him richer. So like, good luck finding some sympathetic ears for him.
  - artursapek 3y ago
    Have you actually listened to him talk about it, or only read Forbes articles?
  - busterarm 3y ago
    Insulin? He didn't have anything to do with insulin. It was Daraprim/Pyrimethamine. It's used to treat toxoplasmosis. It's also been off-patent for over 40 years and another pharmaceutical could have made a generic but none thought it would be profitable enough to even bother.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - artursapek 3y ago
      Really goes to show how uninformed these opinions of him are.
      - busterarm 3y ago
        Why be informed when you can blindly hate and double down when presented with any information without any consequences?
        ToucanLoucan 3y ago
        I accepted your correction and reaffirmed he's still a piece of shit because jacking the price of any drugs for no reason apart from your ability to do so makes you a piece of shit. The specific drug in question may make you a smaller or larger piece of shit, but a piece of shit you remain. For that matter, not even isolated to drugs. Charging a higher price for the same product when you are already a ludicrously profitable entity for no reason is a shitty way to treat customers.
        busterarm 3y ago
        But there is a reason to increase the price of a drug. To fund research of new drugs. Also if you raise the price of an off-patent drug, other pharmaceuticals are incentivized to manufacture a generic to compete with you and bring your prices down. At the time nobody was touching it for 40 years. Keep in mind that this price is what was charged to insurers. Insurers negotiate the price back down. Uninsured patients up to 5x the federal poverty level were promised the drug for free. Pharma companies in the US will charge what insurance companies are willing to pay. It's not an issue of individual greed, it's an issue of a regulatory system and set of incentives that collectively are fucking you. There are far more expensive drugs out there than Daraprim with worse markups and nobody is identifying the CEO of those companies and calling them the most hated man on earth.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- busterarm 3y ago
  It's not that really. At least not the whole of it. It was just easy to tie him as a face to the kind of corporate entities that people hate. Also his position was much more vulnerable than other pharma executives who can afford to pay armies of PR teams, etc. He has a need for attention and a poor sense of self-preservation -- sort of like weev but without being a massive racist.

mmcgaha 3y ago

I have never heard this perspective. What are some examples of where he has been mischaracterized?

artursapek 3y ago
All pharma companies price gouge. His company was giving a lot of the drug away for free to people who couldn't afford it, and insurance companies were paying the higher cost in other cases. Shkreli was singled out because he's addicted to getting attention on the internet so he put it on himself, and he has an easy to make fun of physical appearance. If you actually watch his livestreams and listen to what he has to say instead of reading legacy media, you'd get a different perspective on him.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > All pharma companies price gouge. Perhaps, but only Shkreli decided to 10× his drug prices overnight. Or, as one person put it, "[Shkreli] is to a research-based company like a loan shark to a legitimate bank"
  - busterarm 3y ago
    The patent had expired on the drug four decades prior and no other pharmaceutical bothered to try and make it available. We really got the best outcome out of this stunt. He exposed real weaknesses in what we're doing and also the FDA process to market generics and instead of doing anything to fix it outside of the context of this one drug, we shot the messenger.