How in the world is this an example of failed capitalism or libertarianism? If anything, this is an example of unintended side effects of government regulation.
Of course, blame everything on something you already agree is the problem.
How about a new regulation: Government negotiates in bulk the prices of all drugs?
Well, the public backlash will dictate that the free market has more power than the heavy hand of government.
Yet, this guy is among the scummiest shit-bags I have ever seen try to sell evil with a giddy grin. Fuck him.
$500 for 30 capsules of cycloserine is outrageous anyway. :mad:
I’ll have to see if I can find the link, but based on his tweets, this guy seems like a major A-hole even if he didn’t do this.
Sort of like the fire department jacking up the price of putting out your house fire?
Turns out he will lower the price after all. Probably because he doesn’t want to get dragged out of his home and murdered by angry mobs.
The last company this guy formed fired him and is suing him for $65 million, saying that he bled the company dry to pay off hedge fund people that he defrauded. He looks like a crooked nobody that will be gone soon. Sort of a Wolf of Wall Street scam artist except already on the way down before he could get any pussy.
Which rule, exactly, makes government partially to blame for this idiot? Maybe it is the rule against this man’s parents leaving a young, greedy, antisocial monster alone in the woods to let him fend for himself against the elements?
Looks like this is an evil villain who can’t handle the pressure.
So now we’ll see what happens. I suspect that “over the next few weeks” means that he’ll wait until the public’s attention has turned to something else and then he’ll quietly lower the price by a dollar or two.
That guy has a punchable face.
More fun too.
I can make this drug. But I’m not allowed to sell it. Others already make this drug. And they sell it at a low price. But they’re not allowed to sell it here.
This will be addressed by Congress. They wouldn’t let an opportunity to get campaign contributions like this slip by.
Congressman: Excuse me, Mr. Asshole pharma crook. What you did was a travesty! My constituents are outraged and I’m going to introduce a bill next session that will make this highly illegal.
Mr. Asshole: Oh, that’s terrible, I was just about to write a check to your campaign for $100,000.
Congressman: You go ahead and write that check, sir. I’ll make sure the bill never sees the light of day and I’ll vote against any other bill that may get introduced. Fuck my constituents. Have a nice day Master… I mean, sir!
That depends, optimal for whom?
That’s the problem isn’t it? “optimal” strikes me as a fuzzy concept, or at least an incomplete one.
For Shkreli, this drug is a resource for earning a profit for stockholders, including himself, so “optimal” means “most profitable”.
For people with toxoplasmosis, “optimal” has a whole different meaning.
Yeah. Thank god Teddy died in 2007! (Our white Persian.)
It seems to me that this is an unintended side effect of certain regulations that have resulted in the lack of a competitive free market. From what I understand, the patents for this drug have expired and yet this guy owns a monopoly it. Our regulatory framework for drugs creates barriers to entry that make it time consuming and expensive for domestic drug manufacturers to compete with this. Further, this drug is produced internationally but yet our regulations forbid competition on that front. We could stop this dead in its tracks if we let an Indian manufacturer that already makes and sells this drug for pennies per pill have access to our market. I’m not saying we should do that, but it would absolutely undercut this guy.
I am not saying that our drug regulations serve no purpose nor that they are even not a net positive. I am not anti-regulation. I do think it is crazy to look at this situation where one guy has essentially a government protected monopoly and consider this an example of the evils of the free market. This is the furthest thing from the free market. There are probably plenty of examples where you can blame free market economics for some bad outcome, but I think this is not one of those.
I saw him interviewed on CBS News last night - he was actually claiming the price rise was a humanitarian, altruistic gesture, since it would give his company funds to finance future drug research.
A smarmier grin you never saw. Made me wanna grab a baseball bat.
I think he’s just trying to get rich quick and pay off his former company and hedge fund investors. The question is, was he trying to do it by making money off the drug or by making politicians get interested in pricing and causing panic in the market so he could short sell other drug company stocks?
It’s off patent, and has been for a long time. The molecular structure is public. There is absolutely nothing stopping you, physically or legally, from making Daraprim yourself and selling it at a loss to help mankind or simply handing it out on an as needed basis.
I’m not defending this particular guy, but the rhetoric that drugs should be developed to help mankind even if that means losing lots of money rings false when not a single person is willing to do it.