How was Martin Shkreli able to raise the HIV drug by 5,000% Is

Government's, as usual.

Shows how flawed the insurance system is.

>>1067287
It took less than a week for another company to make a huge PR coup by undercutting him. This is a textbook victory for both capitalism and the government that protects this system.

>>1067287
Just another reason why a true free market economy wouldn't work and why government intervention is sometimes necessary. Here's the thinking of your average free market anarchist:
>Price gouging wouldn't happen if competition was allowed! The market would have corrected this if it was truly free. We should do away with drug patents so that anyone can make this drug.
What these people fail to understand though is that without drug patents this drug would have never been made in the first place. Why would a pharm company spend an enormous amount of money on R&D to develop drugs if another company could just steal the patent and rip them off? Patents promote innovation and without the enforcement of them it would stifle that innovation.

>>1067310
Patents, and intellectual property in general, are stifling creations that only serve to constrict the market and drive profits up for companies that are able to patent. If intellectual property was freely distributed, there would be a smaller barrier to small companies using the intellectual content of a larger company, and visa versa. This is what Google does, it patents very little and allows lots of smaller companies into its ecosystem so it can profit off of them. It's a symbiotic relationship.

Another thing that people fail to realize is that many drugs like this are patents by universities on NSF or other government money. Now that corporations are crippling governmental regulation, that NSF money is drying up. Now only drugs that are profitable will be made; human well being has been erased from the equation.

First of all, there is nothing unethical or "wrong" with charging any price for any product.

As for this particular case, he was able to charge an exorbitant price because he knows Obama will pay whatever the people can't. In a perfect world, there would be minimal government involvement in this market, and 3rd party generics would be sold freely to compete with these brand name drugs.

Those who wanted the brand could pay the thousands (it would likely be merely hundreds in this system), those who just needed the medication would buy the store brand.

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>>1067382
>This is what Google does, it patents very little and allows lots of smaller companies into its ecosystem so it can profit off of them

jej. Ain't nobody sitting out in the patent game, dawg. Nobody.

>>1067382
>companies that are able to patent
Which is pretty much every company. Patent fees are only like $100 per page. There isn't much barrier to entry. How do you figure that Joe Blow should be able to come in and steal something that took some company 5 years and millions of dollars to develop? If you were said company and someone else rips off your patent and produces your drug for cheaper since they don't have R&D costs would you ever want to innovate again? No, you would be looking for ways to rip off the next guy until there is no new research and innovation dries up.

>Now only drugs that are profitable will be made
Which is exactly how it should be. You put in the time and effort to develop a new drug you should be able to profit off of it. If you are so worried about human well being then support a non-profit that helps get these drugs in the hands of the poor and impoverished.

>>1067287
the king of /biz/

>>1067408
Are you fucking stupid? Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in instrumentation and millions of dollars in man hours it takes to develop one drug? Do you know how many years it take to get something through the application stage and into full blown industrial scale synthesis? Only huge companies have that kind of power.

Now only drugs that are profitable will be made.
>Which is exactly how it should be.

Are you 13? Has nothing bad ever happened to you that required outside intervention? I don't understand how someone can be so blatantly sociopathic.

Look, charity isn't enough. We have to subsidize, through grants or otherwise, the research that really creates incentive to produce drugs. Universities have, by and large, been the ones that have created drugs that people need but are not profitable. It's not just the "poor and impoverished" that need these drugs. What about middle class people who don't fall into that category but require expensive drugs? Should the just die? How have you not thought of something so basic?

Publicly funded research to produce life saving drugs is a necessity because these drugs aren't always profitable, but always necessary. Without them, people would die and therefore they would not be able to participate in the economy.

You are a basic bitch.

>>1067549
>Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in instrumentation and millions of dollars in man hours it takes to develop one drug?
That's my point you fucking dumbass. Most of the costs are to DEVELOP a drug, not in the actual production. Get some fucking reading comprehension. Please.

>Publically funded research...
Nice straw man dumbfuck. When did I ever say that we should do away with grants and government programs? I thought you were stupid but I'm not going to argue with a literal retard.

>>1067603
>moving goal posts, the post.

>>1067616
Wat. How was what I posted any different from my original post that drug patents are needed? If there is enormous costs to the DEVELOPMENT of a drug then why should one company flip the bill for the R&D costs so that other companies can come on and steal it and then undercut their profits?

>>1067626
Because people have to make drugs, using the precious patents that certain companies use, that save lives. Not everyone can pay for them, and therefore they are not profitable.

>>1067287
You just described all of the medical industry.

What is the true fair price of an MRI scan or a brain surgery or a night's room? The hospital can charge any arbitrary figure they like. You can't say "Nah, don't want it, too expensive."

The hospital expects your insurance to pay the inflated cost or to get you on a debt repayment plan.

>>1067637
Which is exactly why drug patents have expiration dates. They give the company a chance to recoup all the money they spent on R&D then open up the market for other drug companies to produce it cheaper. I really don't see the problem with this. Without that company or the patent the drug would have never existed in the first place because no company is going to spend millions of dollars and years to develop a drug if they aren't protected from other companies stealing it. So you know that even 50 years ago 99% of these drugs never existed? It's our entitled generation that demands everything be handed to them.
>If the drug exists I want it now and I want it cheap! No I dont care that it didn't even exist a year ago. Force those fuckers to give it to me!... (even though they were the ones who took the financial risk and time to develop it and would lose money and go bankrupt if they just gave away these drugs)

Seems legit.

>>1067294
Everything is government's fault, so sayeth muh persnul 'sponsubility.

>>1067642
Fucking this, in any conventional monopoly, the monopoly in question can't just arbitrarily raise the price without reason, its not as bad as you gommies make it out to be. However, in medicine, everything is put on the insurance expense so the average Joe never actually sees the real cost, he's been paying for it on day one when he signed up for his insurance. Similarly, this drug can get jacked in price probably because he ran the numbers and found out he'd probably only lose a marginal number of customers and the rest would have a source to pay for this.

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>son of poor immigrants who mopped floors to make ends meet and give their son a chance, finally makes it, finally gives a middle finger to all those fuckers, makes it big
>pharma/insurance sees an easy scapegoat and sics the media to zero in on ONE guy whose actions don't come close to the heinous shit they do every single day, all he's doing is forcing the insurance to pay more; sticking it to shitheels who ALWAYS have it coming
>a short, pale, skinny, hitler hair, high pitched robot-esque weirdo is publicly crucified while the rest make out like literal fucking bandits
>stupid liberal faggots ask how can we change this? how could this happen? MUH SANDERS MUH SANDERS
>they don't realize that they would hate the real solution more than the system as it is, they want to have their cake and eat it too because the only real solution would involve having their little bourgeois safe space getting totally wrecked when comrade jamal comes to wreck their tight boipussy

I think it's a failure of the patent system. If patents had a shorter lifetime, companies wouldn't be holding onto them as assets and they'd have less chance of becoming giants. Then we'd see more, smaller companies and price-gouging like this wouldn't have a chance.

I think we should have these patents, but their lifetime should be much shorter.

>>1067680
Except here's why that's bullshit:

1. Those drugs are discovered by individual researchers who aren't compensated for the breakthroughs they make beyond their regular modest salary. The massive profits from each breakthrough drug go to the jew board members and shareholders. Taking away the huge profits on lifesaving medication won't remove the incentive to discover new drugs because for the people doing the work, they're already not seeing the fruits of their labor.

2. It's only so expensive to produce new drugs because our large pharmaceutical companies have used regulatory capture to make it that way as a means of barring competition. The large drug companies can afford the high intial cost, but new smaller competitors can't. The FDA is their bitch.

Checkout the interview Vice just did with him.

He's not an evil guy.

He bent over backwards to make sure that the individual patients aren't being fucked by this, including giving away that drug for free to anyone who doesn't have insurance.

He also went out of his way to sell the drug in smaller bottles so that hospitals can still afford to keep it on-hand.

The only victims here are the insurance companies.

It's also made crystal clear that he's a robot.

>>1070766
Both of your points are completely wrong. Where are you even getting your info from? You have never worked in this field have you?