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Price-gouging Maker of EpiPen Literally Said That Critics Can Go Fuck Themselves (gizmodo.com)
Back in August of 2016, the pharmaceutical company Mylan came under fire for jacking up prices of the EpiPen from $57 in 2007 to roughly $600 in 2016. The public backlash has been significant. Gizmodo adds: But the chairman of Mylan has a message for any critics: Go fuck yourself. Well, at least that's what we think he said. The New York Times has a new article about the fact that prices for the live-saving allergy medication haven't actually come down since last year. And the article has a rather strange way of describing the attitude of Mylan chairman Robert Coury. This is how the New York Times describes Coury's reaction to critics of Mylan's price gouging: "Mr. Coury replied that he was untroubled. He raised both his middle fingers and explained, using colorful language, that anyone criticizing Mylan, including its employees, ought to go copulate with themselves. Critics in Congress and on Wall Street, he said, should do the same. And regulators at the Food and Drug Administration? They, too, deserved a round of anatomically challenging self-fulfillment."
The epipen isn't the only player in the market, its popularity is due to schools support for it, as an easy way to administer the drug. If it is too expensive the schools should consider a replacement. And have this guy just blame critics in the poor house with a stack of epipens that he will sell at a loss.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And then "well at least that's what we think he said." Oops. Your bombastic use of a word immediately discredits you. However, since it does appear that the article is saying that he actually said that, perhaps the term "reportedly" could have been used instead of literally.
At some point, this orifice at the negative end of the esophagus will be responsible for the untimely demise of a person who is mourned by someone with a rather low tolerance for bullshit of this kind, and this person of limited longanimity will rip said orifice a suitable replacement for the aforementioned orifice.
Preferably slowly, painfully and streamed via a service that many people can enjoy.
And nothing of value will be lost. Except maybe the YouTube video of it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is a difference between something being legal and something being a good idea.
The pharma and biotech industries as a whole want to avoid price regulations but this kind of behavior heavily pushes politicians to look at passing laws to do that for consumer protection. That is why when Martin Shkreli raised the price of an AIDS medication by 5000% another company started to manufacture the same drug and sold it at only slightly above cost. The intention was to stave off new regulations by showing they could deal with bad actors as an industry and not harm patients in the process. My understanding is that the same thing is being worked on right now to get some more auto-injectors approved and drop the price way down in order to prevent tis from being used to regulate.
The problem is that some drugs are seriously expensive to make. Some of them require some difficult processes that making enough of the drug for one person for one year can cost $50K and that does not cover the cost of R&D that went into it. Typically those drugs would then sell for $100K or so. If you have price caps then many drugs would just not be made at all because they are at the edge of our technology and we don't know of a cheaper way to make them. Especially with biotech drugs you have to connect together tens of thousands of atoms essentially perfectly. You need to make on the order of 10^24 of the molecules and your defect rate has to be 0.001%. There is nothing else on our planet that is manufactured to those kinds of standards and it is HARD and EXPENSIVE. The prices are coming down on them as technology gets better but mostly what happens is that even harder molecules are made.
It really bothers me when I see a company that makes a drug for $0.50 and then sells it for $100+ because it puts the entire industry at risk. I don't want to see DNA, RNA and protein based drugs going away because they no longer fit within price caps.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
I don't have a problem with doctors and other end-providers doing well for themselves. I also don't have a problem with people who invent things making some real money from their inventions. After all, those who invent life-saving devices and those that have the knowledge and skills to save lives are doing some pretty amazing things. What I do have a problem with is all of the middlemen, that act to hand-off something, without really contributing, and siphoning-off their cut as they do it.
I suppose this is why I support single-payer. I've heard arguments about choice in one's insurance company, I've heard arguments about being being worried about being denied treatment for something. Thing of it is, most people do not have choice in their insurance providers as they're limited to what their employers provide, and those insurers themselves limit the doctors available for affordable pricing (ie, which doctors have come to terms with the insurer), and the companies themselves already have things like stipulations against pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps on expenditures per patient.
As far as I am concerned, if we already have numerous redundant bureaucracies that are bloated, inefficient, and expensive as a side-effect of being profit-driven, then why don't we do away with that and go to a system with a single bureaucracy? Even if it is bloated and inefficient, it's still only one bloated and inefficient bureaucracy, and if it's not profit-driven then it will probably cost less to operate than the numerous private insurance companies. And if proper separation is reintroduced then suddenly basically all providers are available.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You think that the government would be less bloated? We are talking about the government. They created the concept of ineffectual bloat and then expanded, enhanced and perfected it. The government home of the $50,000 hammer.
No, private industry with a profit motive will always be more efficient than government bureaucrats with no motive at all for efficiency and service.
Take a look at the deadly mess that is the VA and tell me single payer is better.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
when their patent expires.
It's not even their patent. Pfizer owns the patent and manufactures them. Mylan only holds the exclusive rights to market EpiPens in the USA.
It's time to drag both Pfizer, Mylan and the FDA into court on federal antitrust charges and collusion to keep other products and market channels available.
Have gnu, will travel.
The only thing private industry is efficient at is maximizing profit which implicitly involves exploitation and cost-cutting. If government didn't work at all, the country would be in shambles. Overall, the government works fairly well, and is accountable to the populace. Private industry is only accountable to their shareholders, whose motives are always just "more profit". There are actually a lot of people in government who have the peoples' interests at heart, believe it or not.
Congress has forced the FDA to block the sale of imported drugs, the same congress has also blocked the government from negotiating prices even though Medicare and Medicaid combined constitute 80% of all drug and device sales.
Allowing the reimport and negotiation of drug prices would bring US prices into line with the rest of the world.
Water treatment, purification, and distribution. Trash collection. Sewer service. In my state they operate a damn-good highway maintenance program, admittedly with the actual repair jobs being contracted, but the project management being centrally coordinated by a bureaucrat.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
At least one chairman who has balls to say what he actually thinks instead of hiding behind insincere excuses. On the other hand I hope he won't cry when his critics start using stronger language as well.
What you call "balls" I define as Corporate Arrogance, and quite frankly, I'm sick and fucking tired of it.
It's amazing how we have anti-monopoly laws on the books, and yet we don't really do a damn thing from stopping mega-corps from buying 90% of the market, and colluding with the remaining 10% that comprise the remaining mega-corps. True competition is dead or dying, and the arrogant attitudes demonstrated by the worlds largest corporations prove it.
I can only hope that 10 companies worth of real competition are birthed from this cocksuckers arrogance to compete directly against the EpiPen, and he's forced to eat his words standing in front of the shareholders explaining why revenue has tanked.
Capitalism and Greed does not justify this kind of shit attitude that has created Corporate Arrogance. And it's high time consumers stop bending over and simply taking it when it happens.