Generic drug price increases 5,000 percent overnight

[devil21]

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's politics as usual. The media lies. Constantly. Every msm story that gets wide coverage should be looked at with a very critical eye and always with "qui bono?"

eta: go look up Shkreli's political donations on fec.gov. He just gave $32k to the DSCC in July. He's also donated to Hillary's presidential campaigns several times, among others.

[timosman]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to devil21 again.

[timosman]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kyle...ampaign-agenda

All three broadcast networks Tuesday morning seized on a pharmaceutical company hiking the price of a prescription drug in order to promote Hillary Clinton’s call for new government regulation of the industry. At the top of NBC’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: “5,000% hike?! The young drug company CEO under fire for raising the cost of a life-saving pill overnight....The controversial decision making it all the way to the campaign trail.”

A soundbite ran of Clinton declaring: “Nobody in America should have to choose between buying the medicine they need and paying their rent.” Guthrie added: “How that CEO has become a pariah and thrust the battle over prescriptions and price-gouging into the spotlight.”

In the full report that followed, correspondent Tom Costello fretted: “You know, this is really a growing phenomenon. Dramatic increases in drug prices raised by pharmaceutical companies focused on their bottom line...”

After playing another soundbite of the Democratic front-runner labeling the move “disgraceful,” Costello touted: “Speaking at an event in Little Rock, Hillary Clinton promised to start holding drug companies accountable for their prices.”

At the top of the 8 a.m. ET hour, news anchor Natalie Morales noted: “Democratic contender Hillary Clinton is expected to provide new details today on her plan to hold the line on prescription drug prices....Mrs. Clinton also tweeted about what she called ‘outrageous price gouging’ by companies that buy older drugs and then turn them into expensive specialty drugs.”

CBS This Morning also devoted a full segment to the topic, with correspondent Don Dahler grilling Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli: “This particular drug is used by a small but vulnerable group of patients, so you see how greedy this move looks?”

A clip ran of oncologist and CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus: “It's predatory practice and it's inappropriate and we have to take a stand.”

Dahler highlighted how Clinton and fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders were taking on the issue:

The topic entered the political debate on Monday, with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeting, “Price gouging like this in the specially drug market is outrageous.” Her rival Bernie Sanders sent a letter to Turing CEO Shkreli demanding information on the price increase and calling the rate hike “the latest in a long list of skyrocketing price increases for certain critical medications.” Sanders and Congressman Elijah Cummings have been investigating drugs that have seen a jump in price.

Another soundbite ran of Dr. Agus demanding: “Right now it's out of control. And so we, as a country, as a government, as individuals, as doctors, all have to get together and say we need to make pricing appropriate.”

Dahler wrapped up the segment: “Hillary Clinton says she will layout a plan today about how to take on what she calls price gouging in the specialty drug market.”

ABC’s Good Morning America only offered a news brief on the topic, but maintained the effort to publicize Clinton’s campaign. News anchor Amy Robach announced:

And Wall Street is reacting to a new proposal from Hillary Clinton. She wants to cap prescription drug prices for some patients at $250 per month. Word of that plan sent biotech and drug stocks plunging. It comes amid growing outrage over a 5,000% increase in the price of a drug used by cancer and AIDS patients. Clinton calls that price gouging.

....

[LibForestPaul]

These monsters are who the public want. Your neighbor, daughter, father, and cousin are insane.

[Suzanimal]

Yet Another Way the Government Drives Up Pharmaceutical Prices

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015Ryan McMaken
Social media exploded with outrage this week after American investor Martin Shkreli purchased the rights to sell the drug Daraprim and raised the price %5,000 percent from $13.50 to$750.

Shkreli was able to do this because federal law bans the importation of the drug. According to the International Business Times, a generic version of the drug is available in India at a price of 10 cents.

So what to do? Well, as you might guess, simply allowing free trade and free importation of a drug that is already widely used would be far too simple. No, the correct solution is, of course, more government regulation and control. Hillary Clinton declared Shkreli’s move to be “price gouging,” implying that the solution would lie in price controls.

Slate’s senior economics writer Jordan Weissmann opined that really the only that can be done is to give the FDA more power to punish drug companies that attempt to raise prices too much. Weissmann acknowledges that the problem could be solved by giving the FDA less power to prevent the importation of inexpensive drugs, that that sort of thing is just too crazy, wacky, and impractical to even be taken seriously.

More reasonable people than Weissmann, though, are forced to freely admit that in cases like this free importation is the obvious solution:

Amir Attaran, an expert on pharmaceutical access issues at the University of Ottawa, said it would have made much more sense to just import the drug from abroad, rather than have it produced in America for so few patients at such high cost.

Mr. Hasler said this was probably not done because foreign manufacturers were not willing to bear the expense of applying for regulatory approval in the United States.

In other words, there is exactly one thing that stands between patients and access to inexpensive drugs: the federal government.

But this inconvenient fact will be no obstacle to the usual opponents of laissez-faire. They’ll indignantly ask “how would the free market solve this problem?” as if it is an unanswerable trump card and as if the free market had anything to do with this prohibition on trade.

And it’s a violent prohibition, mind you. Anyone who actually attempts to import the drug would face stiff penalties, and probably years in prison. There’s nothing about this that’s a mere misunderstanding or an oversight. It is, plain and simple, a use of government power to keep affordable medical care out of the hands of patients who don’t want to pay the monopoly price imposed by federal regulators.

Martin Shkreli knows all of this, of course, and is happy to profit from it. Instead of doing things the old fashioned way and having private thugs break the knee caps of potential competitors, Shkreli merely lets the feds do his dirty work for him. And make no mistake: In this endeavor, Shkreli is no entrepreneur. He is not a capitalist or captain of industry. He is a rent seeker who profits from government power.

https://mises.org/blog/yet-another-w...eutical-prices

[timosman]

http://www.commondreams.org/further/...mate-douchebag

The CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Shkreli reportedly spent $55 million to buy the rights to Daraprim, commonly used to treat toxoplasmosis, an opportunistic parasitic infection that strikes people with compromised immune systems. The drug, which sold for slightly over $1 a tablet a few years ago, has been passed from one pharmaceutical company to the other in recent years.