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Have to be wealthy or healthy: 5,000% increase - price of a Daraprim tablet rising overnight from $13.50 to $750
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ex-hedge funder increases price of pill 5,000% overnight, drawing outcry
Hedge funder buys rights to drug used by AIDS patients and raises price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. A hedge fund trader is at the centre of mounting controversy after the pharmaceutical company he bought raised overnight the cost of a life-saving treatment for people with Aids and weakened immune systems from $13.50 per pill to $750.
The 5,000 per cent increase was enacted last month for Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, by Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York, a start-up firm, shortly after it bought the rights to the drug. The firm is headed by Martin Shkreli.
Daraprim fights toxoplasmosis, the second most common food-borne disease, which can easily infect people whose immune systems have been weakened by AIDS, chemotherapy or pregnancy, according to the Centres for Disease Control. About 60 million people in the United States may carry the toxoplasma parasite.
Only a few years ago, Daraprim cost only about $1 a tablet, but the drug’s price rose sharply after CorePharma acquired it. The New York Times said Glaxo sold United States marketing rights to CorePharma in 2010. Last year, Impax Laboratories agreed to buy Core and affiliated companies for $700m. In August, Impax sold Daraprim to Turing for $55m, a deal announced the same day Turing said it had raised $90m from Mr Shkreli and other investors.
Only a few years ago, Daraprim cost only about $1 a tablet, but the drug’s price rose sharply after CorePharma acquired it.
On Monday, Mr Shkreli told Bloomberg News that firms that had previously owned the rights to the drug had been "virtually giving it away". He added: "It is still under-priced compared to its peers."
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We could go back to the old rule where drug companies were not allowed to advertise any product that required a prescription directly to the public. Accoring to the accounting homework I did for https://yourhomeworkhelp.org/do-my-accounting-homework/ that would have several positive effects.
1. Doctors would be able to discuss something other than "is this product right for me" during the brief time available at appointments.
2. Pharma companies would have to convince doctors of the value of their products, rather than the general public, which has little knowledge on which to base judgments.
3. An end to the billions spent every year on TV ads, all of which seem to be either cartoon characters or people in slo-mo while the voice-over lists all of the potential side effects, many of which are worse than the problem the drug is supposed to address.
Medicare for all is the answer. Why is it that Medicare can function and provide a generally popular product with an overhead of 4 percent, while private insurance companies were in a panic when the ACA was limiting them to 20 percent?