Apparently he has resigned from one of his positions.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/18/investing/martin-shkreli-arrest-turing-kalobios/index.html
For one of my medications for Crohn’s Disease, I used to have to pay $1,700 (the price kept going up) for a one month’s supply, until I reached the (very high) annual deductible of my employer’s insurance plan. Once I started ordering from an online pharmacy in Canada – all I had to do was send them my prescription by email – I was able to get a year’s supply for about $600.
Pharma bro has now tweeted that the accusations are “baseless and without merit.” I think this means we get a juicy trial, in which Mr. Sleazebag gets to explain such things as why he claimed, to potential investors, that he had $35 million under his management, when actually he had $700. Perhaps it was a rounding error.
He’ll get to explain how his new company paid millions in “settlements” and “consulting fees” to the investors he swindled in his previous hedge fund, people who had done no consulting for the new company and were due no settlements from the new company. Perhaps it was an accident, or maybe the dog ate his homework.
This should be good.
“Could any of your kids have done something like this??” I don’t think my son could, he has a sense of ethics a lot stronger then probably my own are. That said, I suggest you read some of the posts on the boards on here about getting into the elite schools from the parents and their attitudes and assumptions about how to get their kids into these schools and why they want them there, and it will give you insight. Nothing like this surprises me, while there are a lot of people in the financial industry whom the words greedy, unethical, or wiin at any cost’ and so forth hold true, hedge funds tend to especially attract that kind of person, a lot of what they do quite frankly is ‘get rich quick’, and more than a bit of what they do is dubious, if you believe that the financial markets are there to provide working capital or to use the marketplace to get goods from supplier to provider (commodities markets). Their whole existence is predicated on rapid, large returns, and it generates the kind of culture that drives a piece of crap like this delta bravo. I am sure the defenses are already in place from the great pr machine that seems to float around the rich and less than ethical, how while they generate huge profits, how they may seem like they don’t care about people, etc, I am sure you will get how they donate money to charity, how they really care about their communities and so forth, have seen plenty of it in my time around the industry, saw plenty of that when people complained about financial firms and hedge funds getting bailed out, and hearing that this was only fair, that these companies ‘did so much for the economy’ so therefore deserved it (I would never say that, I think they got bailed out because they were allowed to pollute the financial and banking systems, the only thing they all deserved was to be ruined and sent to jail).
As far as why drugs are expensive here, a lot of that has to do with anti competition regulation. For example, even if you have a prescription, technically buying drugs overseas or from Canada is illegal, there are laws that strictly prohibit that. Insurance companies, who you figure would have reason to search out cheap prices, have close ties to the Pharmaceutical industry. Medicare and other government health insurance programs are forbidden from using their size to negotiate prices by law, many of those who talk abut the power of the market and so forth to bring down health care prices helped pass these laws. One of the reasons drugs are cheaper in Canada and other countries is not because the cost of production (put it this way, around 95% of the components that make up drugs are manufactured in low cost countries like India, as are many of the generic products sold by generic providers), but rather those countries have price controls. Rather than not sell the drugs there, since they make money even at the cheaper prices, the drug companies in effect subsidize that with the high price of drugs here in the US, which insurance companies pay and then pass it on to the policy holders). It is one of the reasons the drug companies are fighting a single payer system, they are afraid that they won’t be able to have this kind of system going down the road.
Maybe not quite as blatant, but he is not alone.
DS once told me that he learned from some sources that sometimes a drug will be changed slightly from time to time. Even though there is not much noticeable improvement in the new drugs, they inflate the price significantly. This applies to some of the expensive medical equipment too. I heard there is some type of radiation equipment for cancer patients which is so expensive that there are only like half of dosens of medical centers which have it, and its improvement over the more traditional radiation equipment is minimal at best for treating most types of cancers.
Looking at the big picture, most patients are not cost-justified to be treated by such an insanely expensive equipment/procedures. If the super rich people want it, fund the research for such equipment and pay for the procedures by themselves. Do not ask the the majority of tax payers to help fund it also just because the top 2-3% population want it.
On the funny side: my wife showed me a cartoon showing the differences between how a rich person makes money (or living) and how a typical person makes money (or living):
Both a rich person and a poor one are shown going fishing on a river bank. The poor one goes fishing as a normal person would do: He fishes one fish at a time from the river and put the fish in a bucket.
On the other hand, the rich person fishes by using fish rod with a large hook. He uses the hook to pick up the bucket of a poor person when the poor person’s bucket is full of fishes and makes all the fishes in other’s bucket his own, and leaves the poor person empty-handed at the end of the day.
It exaggerates the situation of course but it is funny anyway.
^^^
Are you saying that insurance plans cover the tests using “traditional” radiation equipment, but do not cover the same tests using the minimally improved version (aka the new models) of the same equipment? Can you, please, give some examples?
Are you sure you are not taking about surgical equipment? The Da Vinci robot?
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/is-da-vinci-robotic-surgery-revolution-or-ripoff-021215
Is it the robot, or the operation it has commonly been put to use on (prostate removal), that is the questionable part? Perhaps both…
The article talks about comparison of Da Vinci v laparoscopic surgery, but I only skimmed it, so can’t say if it is one specific type of surgery. Will take a closer look next year. 
We’ll, I would hardly call da Vinci Robot a minimal improvement over a high-end laparoscope, so that’s probably not what he meant.
That said, public grants spent on developing new revolutionary technologies is never a waste of money – these technologies lay the foundation for a new generation of equipment and instruments that quickly become ubiquitous and affordable to the public. Look, for example, at the prices of solar panels since 1997: first only available to the top 2-3%, but today most consumers can afford them.
An example: Proton beam center
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140412/MAGAZINE/304129979
Last time I checked it, my insurance company did not want to cover the cost of this kind of treatment.
It is a controversal topic and it is not easy to reach a universal consensus.
Okay, thank you mcat2. Now I realize that you meant minimal improvement in the outcome rather than technology. This is, of course, a different matter.
this article brings up a good point. pharma has been tarnished by missteps over the last couple decades and made it go from one of the most respected industries to the same level as tobacco and oil companies. it is to bad because they really change and save lives.and this guy Shkreli has really been icing on the cake …he really is like a villain from a movie.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2016/01/01/whats-up-next-biotech-and-pharma-predictions-for-2016/
Pharma Bro’s attorney cannot hide behind attorney-client privilege:
There’s no attorney-client privilege where the attorney and the client conspired to commit crimes.
The answer is as usual “it depends,” but it was the case here.
What a disgusting human being this Pharma Bro really is:
http://www.vice.com/read/why-is-martin-shkreli-still-talking
bunsenburner–here is a better video of the guy…he may actually be able to plead insanity and if I was on the jury i would buy it!
http://www.tmz.com/2016/01/28/martin-shkreli-ghostface-killah-threat/
The lawmakers got a taste of Pharma Bro’s first-rated a-holism today:
He refused to say anything or reply to any questions, just sat there with a grin, and later tweeted calling the congress folk “imbecils.” Yeah, the jury in his upcoming criminal trial will love to be called “imbecils.”