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Medicine that costs $1 to make raised in price from $13.50 to $750.00
The head of a US pharmaceutical company has defended his company's decision to raise the price of a 62-year-old medication used by Aids patients by over 5,000%. Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim in August.
CEO Martin Shkreli has said that the company will use the money it makes from sales to research new treatments. The drug is used treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects people with compromised immune systems.
After Turning's acquisition, a dose of Daraprim in the US increased from $13.50 (£8.70) to $750. The pill costs about $1 to produce, but Mr Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, said that does not include other costs like marketing and distribution.
Cost of Daraprim Medication Raised By Over 50 Times
BBC is reporting on a massive price hike of an essential drug used by AIDS patients:
The head of a US pharmaceutical company has defended his company's decision to raise the price of a 62-year-old medication used by Aids patients by over 5,000%. Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim in August. CEO Martin Shkreli has said that the company will use the money it makes from sales to research new treatments.
The drug is used treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects people with compromised immune systems. After Turning's acquisition, a dose of Daraprim in the US increased from $13.50 (£8.70) to $750. The pill costs about $1 to produce, but Mr Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, said that does not include other costs like marketing and distribution. "We needed to turn a profit on this drug," Mr Shkreli told Bloomberg TV. "The companies before us were just giving it away almost." On Twitter, Mr Shkreli mocked several users who questioned the company's decision, calling one reporter "a moron".
Why not switch to a generic pyrimethamine tablet? They don't exist right now, according to the New York Times (story includes examples of other recent price hikes):
With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim's distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.
The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.
The drug is also used to treat malaria and appears on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. Toxoplasmosis infections are a feline gift to the world.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:39PM
I guess you have to be a resident of a state without physician assisted suicide. Unless each an every health care provider will cover any drug it takes for you to live, then there is a death panel. Any company that has provisions in place where they can weasel out of giving you treatment has people deciding who gets to live and day.
In the state of Oregon there was a situation where a woman's chances of survival put her in a bracket pre-decided by the state public healthcare (OHP) where treatment would be cut off.
The woman was denied her cancer treatment, but OHP said they would cover end of life easing including physician suicide.
http://www.kval.com/news/26140519.html [kval.com]
Sound like a death panels to me.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @12:13AM
And her death-panel insurance policy would've even denied her that, although it would've happened a lot sooner because they'd have denied all of her treatments from the very start.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday September 23 2015, @01:01AM
Justifying bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior does not make this acceptable. I am not saying private insurance is better, I am not saying public insurance is worse. My comment is that you can't claim there are no death panels. All insurance has them, all new insurance will have them. I am just tired of hearing that they will "go away" with public insurance, it is misleading and wrong.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @04:06AM
Everything is a "death panel". If your job fires you and you're sick, or worse they fire you because you're terminally ill, you can no longer pay your medical bills, thus your former employer has become your "death panel". The term is nothing but a meaningless scare-word which has literally no purpose or definition beyond spreading FUD.