If you are a drug company, and you acquire a drug that has no competitors, and you immediately massively increase the price of the drug, we assume that you’re doing it to make money. There is a fairly well accepted playbook for distracting attention from that obvious explanation. You’re raising the price to fund research and development, for instance. Or, sure the list price of the drug is high, but you have assistance programs to make sure that anyone who needs it can get it.<\/p>\n
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, both under congressional investigation over skyrocketing drug prices, were focused on making money before helping patients, members of Congress said internal documents obtained from the companies show.<\/p>\n
\u201c$1 bn here we come,\u201d former Turing Chief Executive Officer Martin Shkreli said in an e-mail to the chairman of the board on\u00a0May 27<\/span><\/span>, after the company had made progress toward acquiring the antiparasitic drug Daraprim, according to a memo from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee\u2019s ranking Democrat Elijah Cummingsof Maryland. After buying the drug later that year, Turing raised the price by more than 50-fold, to $750 a pill.<\/p>\n They are really just in no way good for those companies. Valeant had a presentation describing “PR Mitigation” as a “Critical Risk” to its plans, and suggesting that it should “Minimize media coverage of the pricing increase,” oops. More worrying, perhaps, is an e-mail from Howard Schiller (then chief financial officer, now interim chief executive officer) to Mike Pearson (then CEO) saying that “about 80%” of Valeant’s growth came from price, not volume, which John Hempton points out\u00a0seems to contradict what Pearson said on an earnings call.<\/p>\n Turing was run by Martin Shkreli, how do you think its internal e-mails read? Turing Pharmaceuticals, had paid $55 million to acquire the drug Daraprim, and had raised its price more than fiftyfold to $750 a pill, or $75,000 for a bottle of 100.” Turing even price-gouged a dog, though at least it had the heart to recommend a generic alternative. The Director of Specialty Pharmacy Development at Walgreens forwarded a request for financial assistance for a dog that had been prescribed Daraprim to treat its toxoplasmosis. The request stated: \u201cI have an unusual request. There is a dog that is a patient and he needs Daraprim. He is obviously not covered by insurance \u2026 the cost of what was prescribed is $5,000 for this little guy.\u201d Jon Haas, the Director of Patient Access at Turing, responded: \u201cYou can buy Pyramethamine\/Sulfa [sic] combo pills from a vet meds website for about $80.\u201d<\/p>\n Benjamin Brafman, the same lawyer who helped get rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs acquitted of gun and bribery charges in 2001 represents Shkreli. Shkreli asserts that he is “innocent, and not guilty,” a potent combination, while Brafman is more circumspect, saying that “Mr. Shkreli never intended to violate the law, nor did he intend to defraud anyone.” Shkreli does not, however, have a new public relations person.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world is changing its mind about me,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the tide is swinging from, you know, this is a bad guy to people listening to me and really understanding who I am.”<\/p>\n To be fair, an actual public relations professional says of Shkreli’s approach: “It\u2019s certainly unconventional, but is it bad? I don\u2019t think we know yet.” I feel like I know?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you are a drug company, and you acquire a drug that has no competitors, and you immediately massively increase the price of the drug, we assume that you’re doing it to make money. There is a fairly well accepted … Continue reading