Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

If I had AIDS I wouldn't want my treatment to be dependent on the charity of some random man who I have never even met. I want the price of drugs to be uninflated and for it all to be run in the public interest by democratically elected governments.

"The left" do not believe in charity and with good reason.

You can't set up a system that allows companies to do this and then blame the executives. If there's a problem, it's the IP laws.

This guy has to make the best possible profit for his shareholders. He is not allowed to be generous at their expense. If he can do something that is in the financial interests of the company, he has to do it.

Ah well. It all kind of makes sense to libertarians I suppose.

He owns no patents, just the brand and the FDA licence.

Any pharma company can come out with the same drug under a different name, but let's face it, no one wants to produce a drug that has roughly 5000 users a year and not be guaranteed complete market share. Regulatory fees and FDA fees would easily cost twice the revenue than thay would make.

Really? That's interesting.
In that case it sounds to me like the regulatory and FDA fees are the problem to be honest.
In any event it's systemic and not just that this particular executive is a nasty man.

I think you'll find that a lot of libertarians are sceptical about the sort of IP laws that make this kind of thing possible.

Of course the argument on the pharma side would be that without the promise of being able to market their product without the threat of competition for a while there would be no incentive for them to put in the R&D investment to develop new drugs. Whether or not you accept that argument, that too is a matter of 'basic human survival'.

I don't like his decision either, but it's an unfortunate consequence of the way increasingly prohibitive and anti-pharma regulations. Democrats love to rail on about how bad pharma is, but fail to admit that they are the for the most part the ones leading the charge for increasing regulation and regulatory fees, forcing pharmaceuticals to either work at a loss (not going to happen) or increase prices accordingly.

People were not getting it beforehand, that's the point. It's such a rarely used drug and generates almost no profits at all that the previous owners were barely making it. This is the first time this drug is even getting the slightest bit of attention from the industry.

This guy is literally making it more available by asking those with insurance and wealthy people to pay a little more so that he can pour money into research and hopefully develop a generic version, while at the same time giving away his drug to low income, uninsured people.

Not to mention that the old and young will get it on Medicaid and Medicare, and a lot of low-income families on Obamacare. And that's for free. People paying (who don't have insurance that will pay out) still pay considerably less for this drug than for other drugs for similar afflictions.

That's the point. There are roughly 5000 users of the drug (nothing by pharma standards), and the previous owners were just giving them away for next to nothing because their losses were negligible (and would count as a loss they could put towards their net incomes to qualify for more corporate tax breaks) and produced them from time to time.

The old owners saw it as a non core asset, and stopped production whenever it suited them.

Shkreli doesn't own a patent for the drug (its like 70 years old). He just own the brand and the FDA licence.

Anyone pharma company could have come up with a competitor, but they don't because there's no money to be made.

I think you'll find that a lot of libertarians are sceptical about the sort of IP laws that make this kind of thing possible.

Of course the argument on the pharma side would be that without the promise of being able to market their product without the threat of competition for a while there would be no incentive for them to put in the R&D investment to develop new drugs. Whether or not you accept that argument, that too is a matter of 'basic human survival'.

Sorry Fango, you put forward good arguments and i'm aware of how much R&D costs for pharma and the limited demand pool but this drug has had no future potential, otherwise it would have been researched further.

This guy has no Pharma credentials, he's there to make money. No healthcare supply company will buy it in for that price and if they do, a company will pop up and undercut him as the drug will suddenly become profitable. It's listed as an essential medicine but it also has v high resistance, so it's not even that good.

He won't make money from it because no one will buy it at $750 a pill, they will seek alternatives so I don't see where he's going with it. As far as I can see, he seems to be shooting himself in the foot?

This is why patents exist anyway, to allow development costs to recoup over X years of exclusivity before it comes off-patent. It's already off patent, but demand is so low and will stay low. He doesn't have a monopoly and low demand coupled with high price doesn't get you very far in business.