
Big Price Increase for Tuberculosis Drug Is Rescinded - aaronbrethorst
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/business/big-price-increase-for-tb-drug-is-rescinded.html
======
lxe
This is NOT the currently viral Turing Pharmaceuticals's hike of Daraprim's
price ([http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-
overnight-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-
increase-in-a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html)) that's being rescinded. I had
no idea that this practice of buying up patents and increasing drug prices is
so common. Sounds like the pharmaceuticals market is full of some very
unethical folks.

~~~
austenallred
Sounds like handling the PR of buying drug patents and jacking up their price
multiple orders of magnitude just became more expensive.

------
AC__
The pharmaceutical industry is just as corrupt as the financial sector. It
seems capitalists will be capitalists. A lot of well intentioned companies
seem to go this way too. Share holders demand profitable growth, sociopathic
execs are brought in and I think the results speak for themselves.

~~~
jayess
It would be more accurate to say that _people will be people_. Greed is not
limited to capitalists. Greed, lust for money, and the need for power are
observable across all political, social, and governmental systems.

~~~
danharaj
Speak for yourself.

Edit: Here's a nice link.
[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/journals/freed...](http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/journals/freedom/freedom2_21.html)

------
hughes
How to be praised for doubling the price of an essential drug:

1\. Set the price to 55x the original

2\. Wait for outrage

3\. Set the price to 2x the original

4\. Profit

~~~
gameshot911
The drug was being produced at a loss. Raising the price so that the
manufacturer is able to keep producing it is surely preferable to to no drug
at all, right?

~~~
mynameisvlad
I doubt it was _that_ much at a loss to warrant a 55x price increase, though.
Even 2x is kind of a stretch, although I can see making up for past sales or
something (or they were being _really_ generous before).

~~~
cbhl
The numbers you need are in the article: $10M loss over 8 years
(2007-present), ~45 cases/year.

In order to break even, they need to increase the cost of a course of
treatment by about ~$28k/patient.

The new price doubles the price to about ~$50k/patient, which is still short
of this number (but bleeding $3k*45 patients = $135k/year is much more
manageable than bleeding $1M dollars a year).

~~~
refurb
I applaud you sir! Rather than jumping on the hysteria bandwagon, you actually
did the math.

So even if the drug was priced at $28K/patient, the company would be making
zero profit. Huh...

~~~
manigandham
28k is the delta needed. 53k/patient is break-even.

------
toddbranch
"Mr. Hasler said this was probably not done because foreign manufacturers were
not willing to bear the expense of applying for regulatory approval in the
United States to serve a tiny number of patients."

Or we could reduce the burden of applying for approval?

~~~
Scoundreller
I agree. My blood isn't any different than a Europeans' or an Americans', so
why duplicate the approval process? It can't be unsafe for one and safe for
another just because some imaginary line has been crossed.

It would also help to reduce drug shortages if stock could be more easily
transferred.

~~~
refurb
_so why duplicate the approval process?_

It was the separate approval process that prevented an explosion of
thalidomide babies in the US.[1]

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Birth_defects_crisi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Birth_defects_crisis)

~~~
Scoundreller
It could also be argued that one process would have prevented the explosions
everywhere.

------
martinflack
It would be nice for someone to start a non-profit organization supported by
donors that would exist purely to purchase rights to these medicines and keep
them relatively low-cost to patients.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Great idea, and we could call it "the government".

~~~
sneak
S/he said "non-profit" and "donors".

~~~
Rotten194
Keeping people alive in a first-world country shouldn't rely on the whims of
private charity.

~~~
sneak
But as long as it's not a first-world country, fuck those guys, huh?

------
artursapek
"Rodelis reveals almost no information about itself, such as the names of its
executives, directors or investors, on its web page. It operates out of
Alpharetta, Ga., though the Chao Center’s statement said it was based in
Dublin."

They sound a lot like a patent troll.

~~~
markvdb
...with their fiscal headquarters in a tax haven. Dublin? Smells of double
Irish and similar fiscal constructions...

~~~
Scoundreller
This isn't unusual for a pharma company, or any other big company for that
matter.

Transfer/keep/develop the IP in a low-tax jurisdiction and then have their
US/Canadian/whatever division pay a licensing fee to the corp in that low-tax
jurisdiction.

------
avemg
What a boon this is for Turing. I'm willing to bet most of the public will not
realize it's not the same drug from the earlier price hike story.

------
jholman
Although the headline is not referencing Daraprim and Turing Pharmaceuticals,
some of the content is about that, and there is an embedded video interviewing
Shkreli, the Turing CEO.

I recommend watching it; I thought it was a very good interview. Shkreli makes
his case much more effectively than I'd have predicted.

Example: he claims that a treatment course of Daraprim costs less than other
drugs that, in his opinion, are comparable (i.e. those other drugs are cures
for other similar diseases).

------
o_nate
I'm not a patent lawyer, but I don't understand how 62-year old drugs still
require licenses to be manufactured? Seems like another case of patent law
gone mad.

~~~
refurb
You don't understand why there are regulations around manufacturing a selling
a prescription drug? Really?

I don't know about you, but I kinda like those regulations.

~~~
o_nate
No, I understand that, but I thought once a drug's patent expires then any
reputable pharmaceutical company could manufacture it as a generic (with the
proper testing of course). Is that not the case here?

~~~
andrewpi
Apparently the issue is the testing. You need to purchase a large quantity of
pills from the original manufacturer to compare your new batch with and that
was hard to obtain.

~~~
o_nate
Ah, I see. It sounds to me like the issue is that there's not enough of a
market to attract the interest of another company to get over the initial
fixed costs to get the drug approved. Seems like a possible reform would be to
streamline the approval process for generics to make this easier.

------
hkmurakami
Rescinding seems smart so as not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by
way of overarching regulatory overhaul.

------
strathmeyer
Is this the CEO who was trolling on Twitter?

~~~
bsimpson
No.

------
ck2
Only an act of congress could fix this problem, so we are doomed (they have
post offices to name before they try to shut them all down).

