SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The company that sparked an angry backlash after it raised the price of a drug for treating a deadly parasitic infection by more than 5,000 percent says it will roll back some of the increase.
Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli told ABC News on Tuesday that the new price would make Daraprim more accessible, although he did not say what the new price for the drug would be. A spokesman for Turing did not immediately respond to a request for details.
“We’ve agreed to lower the price of Daraprim to a point that is more affordable and is able to allow the company to make a profit, but a very small profit,” Shkreli told ABC.
The company obtained rights to sell the drug, the only U.S.-approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, in August. It hiked the price overnight from $13.50 per pill to $750.
Turing had said it would use profits to improve the drug’s formulation and develop new, better drugs for the infection. It also stressed that some patients can get financial aid from the company to obtain the drug.
But the price hike sparked outrage from medical groups representing doctors who care for patients with HIV and other infectious diseases, because Daraprim treats patients with compromised immune systems.
Hillary Rodham Clinton called Turing’s price hike “outrageous” in a tweet Monday. While campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president Tuesday, she outlined a broad plan aimed at holding down the cost of prescription drugs.
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I’d like to think it was shame. I’d like to think it was in reaction to the outrage by the public. I really think the other pharmaceutical companies called him and said “Look, if you keep this up we are all going to be regulated, so cut it out. The public can call for your head. WE can make generics of every single one of your generic products and undercut you so badly that you never sell another pill.”
And people wonder why insurance rates are high if insurers have to cover the cost of arbitrary increases. I do actually get the reason that some drugs, especially new ones, are so pricey. The companies invest a ton of money in these things and only every so often do they produce something useful.
However, this one made no sense. I understand if you get the rights to a given drug and you are profit drivin than you want to make some money, but darn. That was a pretty huge price increase. If the drug has been on the market for long it does not even make sense. Not sure how long it is before the generic came out of that drug but if you mark up the price and they have a generic than you more than killed all profit right then and there. I know often it is around a decade or so. Maybe with such a cheap drug a generic was not initially needed?
This is yet another illustration of the failure of the free market when applied to health care. If GM raises the price of a Malibu to $273,000, the result is simple - no one buys them. The demand is elastic. But health care is different. If your life depends on a drug that’s manufactured by only one company, you don’t realistically have the option of saying, “Nope, too expensive. I’m not buying it any more.”
Single payer health care, and a heavily-regulated prescription drug industry, are the only way to go. The trick is to pull that off without stifling innovation. Developing new drugs is wildly expensive, and high risk. If you take away the possibility of reward, you don’t get any new drugs. I’m not sure how we can achieve a balance.
It’s my understanding that part of the outrage against this sociopathic sh*thead was that he not only bought the drug as it was off patent but, in addition, he prevented any other companies from making a generic version by preventing them from buying up mass amounts of the drug to copy for generic production. He truly wanted to corner the market on this one drug and, if you couldn’t afford it, too bad you die. He genuinely could care less. If you saw the interview with him on CNBC, you would have seen a true sociopath who has very little ability to mask his very twisted belief system.
He really is a piece of work, isn’t he?
I’m reminded of the line from Mr. Bernstein in Citizen Kane: