US Drugmaker Raises Price of Vitamins By More Than 800% (ft.com)

David Crow, reporting for the Financial Times: A US drugmaker is charging almost $300 for a bottle of prescription vitamins that can be bought online for less than $5, in the latest attempt at price gouging in the world's largest healthcare market. Avondale Pharmaceuticals raised the price of Niacor, a prescription-only version of niacin, by 809 per cent last month, taking a bottle of 100 tablets from $32.46 to $295 (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source), according to figures seen by the Financial Times. Although niacin, a type of vitamin B3, is available in over-the-counter forms for less than $5 per 100 tablets, some doctors still prefer to use the version approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat high cholesterol. Avondale, a secretive Alabama-based company, put the price of Niacor up shortly after acquiring the rights to the medicine in a so-called "buy-and-raise" deal -- a strategy made famous by Martin Shkreli, the disgraced biotech entrepreneur.

Comments

If you want Vitamin B3

[viperidaenz]

Eat Vegemite.

Statins

[manu0601]

Artificially expensive niacin is still better than statins, another cholesterol-lowering drug that is expensive and toxic for muscles (yes, heart included, that is the funny point)

Re:Today's translations:

[hwihyw]

And you can google for websites which independently test various vitamin/supplements. (https://labdoor.com/rankings/multivitamins). Reputable companies which provide quality vitamins/supplements are dime a dozen, its not rocket science. Also note that non-prescription vitamins and drugs ("capitalism in action") are dirt cheap, versus FDA approved prescription drugs (government in action) such as Niacor, Epipen, etc are only affordable to lottery winners.

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[Dorianny]

Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. In a socialist system this vitamin wouldn't even be available because it never would have been developed in the first place.

Tell that to the Colleges and Universities that actually perform most biotech research, largely backed by taxpayer funds. Socialize costs and privatize profits now that's good old American capitalist ingenuity for you

Re:blame government

[Applehu Akbar]

Goverment regulations cause this problem. Now that we are getting rid of NObamacare, this problem will go away. GUARANTEED.

This new administration could have been an opportunity to bring open-market forces to medicine. But so far, I see no indication of this happening. If anything, the swamp is getting deeper.

Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit!

[Dorianny]

These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains .

These "idiots" specifically target Medicare which is forbidden by law from doing cost/benefit analysis or from negotiating costs, which means that while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs or threaten to drop them from the covered list, Medicare has no choice but to pay whatever the asking price is.

This of course is by design, Big Pharma spends a lot of money on lobbyists and campaign contributions to keep the gravy train rolling

Dream on

[aepervius]

Ever heard of Bayer ? Or Merck (I am speaking of the german one, not the US one It was a german company before the nationalization of 1915) one of the biggest pharmaceutical company ? And yes it does research all over the world, include Darmstadt near where I live. Whoever modded you insightful has no fucking clue and just acted out of the stupid US ideology that the word socialism is bad and an insult, when in reality the US practice some form of socialism, they jsut don't recognize it.

Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit!

[harvey the nerd]

The Martin Shkreli case is about a 70-80 year old drug that was "re-monopolized" under FDA regulations, raising its price over 10,000x. The basic patents are looooong expired. The FDA is not a solution, it is a huge source of the problems - Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man, ya know!

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[angel'o'sphere]

First of all in socialism governments have no monopoly on invention, you are an idiot.
Secondly, vitamins are not invented. They simply exist. Fruits contain them, the skin produces them, meat contains them etc. Idiot.

You seem to think vitamins only exist in forms of pills and people need to eat them to be "more healthy" ... you are mistaken.

Ho boy

[rsilvergun]

Doctor's prefer this because you don't always know what you're getting when you buy OTC vitamins. They're largely unregulated. When you buy prescription vitamins you know exactly what you're getting because they're now fully regulated by the FDA. Source: I've had close family members with cancer who've been prescribed vitamins.

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[tbannist]

You forgot to quote the results and conclusion:

Results. The United States accounted for 42% of prescription drug spending and 40% of the total GDP among innovator countries and was responsible for the development of 43.7% of the NMEs. The United Kingdom, Switzerland, and a few other countries innovated proportionally more than their contribution to GDP or prescription drug spending, whereas Japan, South Korea, and a few other countries innovated less.

Conclusions. Higher prescription drug spending in the United States does not disproportionately privilege domestic innovation, and many countries with drug price regulation were significant contributors to pharmaceutical innovation.

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[serviscope_minor]

I'm currently living in the United Kingdom. Within five minutes' walk of my home are three places - one pharmacy and two shops - where I can buy vitamins, with no prescription.

They also sell prescription strength ones for which you do need a prescription. If you get low on Vit-D it's not all that unusual to get prescribed some.