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Citing 'Moral Requirement To Make Money', Pharma CEO Jacks Drug Price 400% (arstechnica.com)
The chief executive of a small pharmaceutical company defended hiking the price of an essential antibiotic by more than 400 percent and told the Financial Times that he thinks "it is a moral requirement to make money when you can." From a report: Nirmal Mulye, CEO of the small Missouri-based drug company Nostrum Laboratories, raised the price of bottle of nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,392 last month. The drug is a decades-old antibiotic used to treat urinary-tract infections caused by Escherichia coli and certain other Gram-negative bacteria. The World Health Organization lists nitrofurantoin as an essential medicine. In an interview with the FT, Mulye went on to say it was also a "moral requirement" to "sell the product for the highest price," and he explained that he was in "this business to make money."
But maybe it's what they teach at MBA courses.
Anyhow, time to decommercialise medicine. Yes, I know it sounds pinko commie socialist. Even so.
Actually it was I, not Ms Mash, who posted this story.
I’m always amoused when these low-budget shkrelis claim to be defenders of the free market when they make insane price moves. If we actually did have a free market in pharma, we would be able to fill our prescriptions for this compound at the world market price of $18, as per the closing line that was oddly edited out of my post.
The only way price increases like this can be made to stick is to have the FDA on your side, preventing us from being able to compete. Time to rip out the FDA’s ability to keep competition out of the market. Let it manage testing, not price manipulation.
This is exactly how for-profit industries work.
Maybe instead of trying to find ways to make for-profit healthcare marginally less of a roiling tire fire for Americans, we should instead nationalize healthcare, like the rest of the civilized world.
:|
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I seem to recall some orange-faced liberal from New York City telling us he'd force drug companies to lower the price of their drugs. You know, use the power of big government to dictate to private companies how they should run things.
He wasn't lying when he said that, was he?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
a better solution would be to let the US citizens freely engage in commerce and give them a choice to purchase drugs from overseas
love is just extroverted narcissism
On a world scale, the US democratic party is on the right of the center of the political spectrum. Despite being in power for years, they still didn't implement basic social net such as free health care that are considered standard everywhere else in the developed world. Even right-wing political parties support the idea in most places.
Europeans and Canadians aren't starving.
In fact, they are far better off than the average american.
Americans are just too uneducated and unenlightened to see the benefits of proper socialised medicine.
As someone who's lived in both places, I can tell you that the biggest downside of Canadian system over US is all the times where you'd really like to get care right away, but you're not going to die if you don't. *That's* the stuff that really sucks in Canada.
Emergency room visits where you're not bleeding out on the floor, or finding an obstetrician when you get pregnant that's not an hour away, finding a specialist to listen to your baby's heart when it sounds a little off, father needing a hip replacement... With all of those, I've had bad experiences in Canada.
In US, if I need a doctor, I can almost always find one the next day, or next week if it's a really unique case. It absolutely sucks having to deal with insurance, costs, and so on, don't get me wrong.... but it is nice to know that I can see someone quickly when I need help.
Both sides need improvement, and Canadian system is a much better starting point... but it's not all roses up there either :(.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
I'm Canadian, and I can assure you that our "socialised" system is:
So please, don't say our system is better than in the US. People are not dying in the streets up here, but when you have a condition, you better be patient. A patient patient.
I'm a Canadian too, and the circumstances you've cited are worst-case and relatively uncommon. Non-critical illnesses are at a lower priority than critical ones, but people get the care they need, regardless of the depth of their pockets. So yes, our system is better, in most ways.
"Oh no... he found the
That's one of the reasons there is so much joint animosity against the current President, he's actually trying is damnedest to keep his campaign promises and that is a threat to the permanent politician class.
Indeed, when I think of Donald Trump I think of a man who keeps his promises. A paragon of virtue right there. Quite a catch.
Because these systems are always partially or entirely tax-funded this obviously means that wait times for some non-critical operations can be higher, because people in immediate risk take priority but this is true in the states as well. If you actually compare waiting times for a specialist for example, you'll note that US is pretty much on par with the UK, and that Canada is on the slower side of other universal model countries (which, is all advanced countries other than the US). I work for the largest health care district of the Finnish single payer health care system with about a million people under it, I can quote you some numbers (these are from 2015 because they're publicly available (Finnish only though), can't access the current stats from home). Of the 27 most common types of surgery, we had altogether 26 658 people in queue in 2015, of which 19,5 % waited for more than 6 months. The median wait time was 87 days. For the 2 heart-related surgery-types on the list (bypass and percutaneous coronary intervention the median was below 30 days). The question here is: would it be better for the uninsured in the US to wait a bit to get good health care from the existing system with public money, or wait til' they die or go bankrupt? Is it beneficial for the US economy as a whole to remain the only country where people have to go into debt due to medical problems?
Thing to realize is that this is about availability, not quality. Quality-wise the US model is not significantly better nor is it worse. In fact, quality-wise the system is just fine for the people who're insured, the main difference is that the lack of universal public insurance leaves some people outside of the system driving up deaths. And the far more commercialised nature of the systems drives up margins and administrative costs (which is a large part of the huge spending difference (about twice the average spending of comparable countries) between the US and the rest of the world. In fact, medicare for example is already cheaper (per head covered) costs-wise than private options, largely cause it has better costs-management and lower administrative costs).
The are plenty of universal models out there which aren't single payer like Canada or here. All the US would have to do to implement such would essentially be to allow medicare/medicaid like option for all , and it would likely bring total costs down in the long term and better care for everyone.
But sure, keep posting anecdotal stuff about wait times instead of the larger picture., that's always constructive!
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
LOL!
Who decides what is "needed"?
Who decides what is a, "priority"?
Do they just give you a pill and send you home?
Yeah! We don't want a faceless government bureaucracy ultimately beholden to elected officials to set health policy! We want all our healthcare decisions to be made by a faceless corporate bureaucracy ultimately beholden to shareholders! Clearly that is the one true path to success!