Of course not. His goal was to make another big pile of money. Now he’s said he’ll reduce the price, though he hasn’t said by how much, but it’ll be just enough to recoup his investment plus “a small profit.” Well, gosh, that only seems fair. Above all, the obscenely rich must never lose money on anything. If it means suffering and financial ruin for patients, that’s just the Invisible Hand at work. What can you do?
The R&D is done, the formula is done, the paperwork is done, the certifications etc are done. All he has to do is run a shift or a half shift in the factory. That’s it. Cover that cost and some profit. That one pill is not supposed to hold up an entire pharmaceutical company.
Greed. I am done with it. I will admit I am hateful of those in power who at all costs try to wring every darn penny out of a company and then leave to do it at another company.
Ethics, honesty, moral fiber, character, conscience, have all become out of favor. Those people get run over and laughed at as the money grubbers run for the exit with the cash in their pockets.
@JustOneDad There are plenty of “regular” pharmaceutical companies which are doing the same thing, just not quite to the same extent. Because drug prices are completely unregulated, Big Pharma is free to charge whatever it wants. And make no mistake, their goal is not to help patients. Their goal is to maximize profits. If that means people don’t get lifesaving medication, they’re fine with that.
@hunt, the law of supply and demand would be better served if Medicare were allowed to negotiate prices. And if drugs such as this one could be imported into the US.
This is a private company so they are free to choose to make less money than they could if they want, but if this were a public company it would be the CEO’s moral duty to do this. He would be acting irresponsibly and immorally by not. So, even if we could suddenly make everyone a more moral person, this problem would have still occurred if a public company was in the same situation. There’s a legal problem here. Likely that pharmaceuticals cannot be imported.
It seems that, if pharmaceuticals could be imported to the US, with let’s say, a 400% import tariff, this problem could never occur. The pills could never cost more than 5x in the US what they cost somewhere else. I’m not sure if other problems would occur but it seems obvious to me that this would be the first thing to look at.
So the drug sells for 50 cents in India, but importation is illegal. The obvious solution is to make importation legal. Have FDA inspectors check out the pharmaceutical company in India for quality issues and then if they pass, allow sales into the US.
Unregulated capitalism tends to not work in cases of life and death or public health. Or, let’s say, when demand for a product is inelastic, or insensitive to changes in price. This is exactly the situation where government has to step in with regulation, and (gasp!) price controls. If you let the “invisible hand” do its work people who can afford the drug live, and people who can’t afford the drug die. Profit maximization for the firm may not dictatte producing enough of the drug for everyone. It might require the company to actively constrain the supply of the drug. There is a role for government in a capitalist system, and this is it.
Actually, lots of pharma companies do the same kind of thing, but to a much smaller magnitude, since they realize that this kind of public backlash would be bad for business in the medium or long term. Such backlash could result in government action that they really would not want, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, approval of imported drugs, etc., or patients and physicians trying to avoid using that company’s (other) drugs when there are alternatives available.
Someone who is looking to make a quick megabuck may not care about the public backlash and its medium or long term effects.
I have been a pharmacist for 26 years. It used to be brand name drugs were expensive, which we put up with because it does take quite a bit of money for research and development to get a drug to market, and quite a few drugs don’t make it to market. Generic medications were much cheaper because all the company had to do was prove it was equivalent to the brand. Over the years brand name drugs started to become more and more expensive. Then lately generic drugs have been crazy with huge price increases on a lot of old-time medications. Drugs like chlorpromazine (an antipsychotic) which used to cost me about $5 for a bottle of 1000, now cost me $10 a pill. Keeping up with the price increases is crazy. The story I heard is that generic brands are paying other brands not to make the medication, therefore they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want. I don’t know what the answer is, but something has to change.
So clever. Yes, I agree that the patients who need this drug, and now cannot afford to pay $63,000 per month for it, are dead meat. Oh well. Just as long as the free market is allowed to function without impediments. That’s all that really matters. If those patients really want that drug, they should get off their lazy butts and become wealthy, right?
It’s not really a free market so long as drugs cannot be imported from other countries. I don’t see that the FDA can argue safety if the same drug, manufactured in other countries, has been used by them for years without any trouble.
Doesn’t apply here. The law of supply and demand assumes perfect competition-- that if one company jacks up the price too high, another company will undercut them. But Skreli has prevented other companies from competing by making it impossible for them to get enough of his drug so they could get a competitor drug approved.
No, no, this is not supply and demand. It’s another topic covered in Microeconomics I: monopoly pricing. The monopolist can set the price of his good to anything he wants to, because he is the only one selling it. So he sets the price so that he’ll get the maximum total profit, even if that means one person pays 10 million dollars for his lifesaving drug and everyone else with the disease dies. If the monopolist is a conscienceless sociopath, he’ll charge the high price and not care that he is sentencing hundreds of people to death.
This is why monopolies like your water company are typically regulated.
Lots of generics are imported from other countries. Lots of the generics on my shelf have been manufactured in India and other places. Or are you saying the average consumer should be able to buy from other countries?