How do you justify raising the price of a 62-year-old drug
from $13.50 per dose to $750 per dose?
You don’t. You can’t.
But Martin Shkreli thinks he can do it.
In fact, he has already raised the price. Now he’s into the
justification phase.
I think he should be in the “hot seat” phase.
There is no moral tenet that can make this price hike acceptable.
There is no “free market” pillar of wisdom that makes this a
good idea.
Shkreli, a dubiously ethical hedge fund wunderkind, used his
company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, to buy the rights to the drug Daraprim, which
has been used since 1953 to treat a small number (about 10,000 or fewer) of
folks who have a rare parasitic infection. He pushed the drug price to the sky
so he could make a lot of money.
I think health insurance companies and our government should
jump into all-out development funding for a generic substitute.
I think our government should remind Shkreli and Turing
Pharmaceuticals that their manufacturing and financial practices are subject to
regulatory scrutiny, and give Shkreli-Turing a full measure of same. He bumped
the price of Daraprim by about 5,400 per cent. I think a half dozen IRS tax
auditors should be assigned to Shkreli/Turing immediately.
Make that a dozen tax auditors. Shkreli likes big moves.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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