Martin Shkreli, the smugly smiling entrepreneur whose absence of conscience would make Ayn Rand proud, made the drug Daraprim famous by engaging in pharmaceutical price gouging. But it isn’t as simple as one little punk trying to screw over the insurance industry (and, therefore, every person who pays for insurance) with a get-rich-quick scheme. Here is some background information on The Great Daraprim Scandal of 2015:
1. According to the 2012 edition of Davis’s Drug Guide, a commonly used medical reference manual, Daraprim (pyrimethamine) is used to treat certain strains of malaria, pneumonia, and a parasitic infection called toxoplasmosis. For the treatment of toxoplasmosis, Daraprim is taken daily for six weeks with an antibiotic in a group called sulfonamides. Although sulfonamide antibiotics are very common, Daraprim is the only drug of its type available for toxoplasmosis and is therefore a necessary part of treatment. Toxoplasmosis is usually curable, but in some cases the disease remains chronic, meaning the pills must be taken daily for years, perhaps for life. This all means the drug was already a major financial hurdle for patients even at the “lower” price of $13.50 per pill, before Shkreli’s company bought it.
Related: AIDS Drug CEO Martin Shkreli Still Hasn’t Lowered Price As He Promised Two Weeks Ago
2. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently heightened its research into toxoplasmosis, because it is estimated that 22% of the U.S. population will become infected with the parasite at some point in their lives. Spores of the toxoplasmosis parasite are passed to humans by eating undercooked meat, primarily pork, or from accidentally ingesting the spores after touching cat feces. In an average healthy adult, the disease usually does not cause symptoms and is controlled by the person’s natural immune system. However, it can be very dangerous in people with compromised immune systems, such as people with AIDS or those being treated for cancer, as well as women who are pregnant who can spread the disease to their children during birth. Symptoms of toxoplasmosis include seizures, lung scarring, blurred vision due to retinal swelling, and altered mental status.
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3. Shkreli claimed that the price increase was necessary to make a profit on the medicine, since previous drug companies were “giving it away” at $13.50 per pill. However, anyone who has watched Shark Tank on TV would know that the first thing investors look for is a proof of profitability before taking on an investment risk, so it certainly raises the question of whether or not Shkreli was speaking the truth with that claim.
It is an easy question to answer: Daraprim seems to have been very profitable when Shkreli bought it. According to IMS Health, which tracks costs of prescription medicine, the pills were sold for $1 each for many years by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Then in 2010, a company named CorePharma bought the rights to manufacture and sell the drug in the U.S., where drug prices are not regulated. GSK retained rights to sell the drug in the rest of its markets around the world. CorePharma then engaged in the “we have to raise prices to fund research” scheme, and by 2014 they had raised the price to $13.50 per pill. That is a 1,350% increase in four years. Due to that increase in price, number of sales fell slightly, most likely among patients with diseases that could be treated with other drugs; but thanks to patients with toxoplasmosis, revenue of Daraprim sales shot through the roof, from under $700,000 to $9.9 million. In other words, it seems Shkreli lied.
The above graphic is from a Washington Post analysis of pharmaceutical price gouging in the U.S. Shkreli is just one guy in a large crowd of investors making money off of this scheme. As for CorePharma’s hefty profits as shown in that graphic, there’s no word on what they accomplished with using the money they “raised for research” in advancing toxoplasmosis treatments, if anything.
4. Only patients in the United States pay the price of $750 per pill.
5. Shkreli was already famous in the millionaire world, long before the Daraprim scandal. Having been labeled “a boy genius” for his investment intuition, his first job was as an intern on Jim Cramer’s TV show Mad Money before he branched out on his own. Prior to creating his current company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, through which he bought Daraprim, he had created a similar company called Retrophin, where he was CEO. But he landed in the news in 2014 when he was fired (yes, fired from the company that he created for himself) due to his sheisty business practices, and now he is now under federal investigation for insider trading and fraud. Donald Trump has referred to Shkreli as “a spoiled brat.”
Neil Ballantyne
I just want to slap that smug look on his face
Garrett Kam
hope he has a lot of cats and eats pork (read about toxoplasmosis)
Hoby Hittson
F@ck him and people like him.
Nick Marriott
Fact number one…..what a shitty nose-job!
avesraggiana
Little Narcissist in the making, now transformed into full-blown narcissist.
Baquas Smith
Was about to say, look at that nose
Russ Carpenter
Dweeb.
Melinduh Kaye
hideous.
Gary Hecklinger
Smug prick
Desert Boy
The Los Angeles Times ran a piece about this dead-eyed bastard and his decision to raise the price of Daraprim to $750 a pill. What was stunning is, most insurance companies refused to cover the price increase.
So if you’re a victim of toxoplasmosis, on top of battling the illness, you’re left to find a source to help you pay for the drug.
The U.S. is the only industrialized nation on earth that doesn’t control the prices of Big Pharma. It’s time for the U.S. to join the rest of the civilized world to end out of control drug prices.
Marylou Porter
Arrogant, smart ass.
Cynthia Gilletti
he has no soul , no heart.
Guido Habets
tham
Welcome to republican’s version of healthcare.
Billy Budd
Disgusting animal. He is not human.
Alex Rothwell
We can’t forget about this guy, He still has to lower the price of this drug.
alphacentauri
@Garrett Kam: You realize even if someone does have a lot of cats or eats pork that it’s difficult to get toxoplasmosis, as you would have to eat cat shit and raw pork.
Ben Bullock
LaToya nose
Kevin J Desmond
I heard he’s a child molester.
NoCagada
He looks like a Doonesbury character … a rancid one
Charles Sylvia
My Nana used to say, “We can’t get them, Charlie, but God will.”
captainburrito
The problem is not just with him but the system as a whole. The insurance system, unregulated drug prices…
With him and other companies that do this, just set up a way for americans to import the meds from a reputable company outside the US as long as they have a prescription. If enough people did that then it pressures them to reduce the price down to something more reasonable.
It makes me sad when american friends visit me in the UK and they raid my medicine cabinet. Even if we pay for the drugs privately, they are still cheaper than getting them from US – even if they are american drugs. Usually american imports are more expensive here.
inbama
Paging Madame Defarge.
Maleko
@Desert Boy: You can’t even think about controlling drug prices in the US if republicans run the House, Senate or the Presidency. They are adamantly opposed to regulating drug prices; I wonder what the morality of that is all about when money is more important than people (OK, we all know that is the republican line of thought anyway). They don’t like people having health insurance unless they pay the market rate for it, thus putting it way, way, way out of reach of most people. They opposed Medicare and they opposed Social Security in Congress. So why do people keep voting for the republican party when the republicans are generally opposed to the best interests of most voters? I understand the evangelical nonsense in the South and parts of the Midwest but the South is way out there on a lot of things. Why vote for a republican if you get Medicare and/or Social Security? The repuglicans would love to kill both programs if you read the Congressional record so why ever vote for them when they vote against your best interests? It’s weird, it really is very complicated to explain’ if people thought about it, maybe the couldn’t explain it to themselves and we’d have a sea-change in governemnt. There is something where kidnapped victims become ‘enamored’ with their kidnappers and look at them in a positive light; there is a term for it, anybody remember what it is?
Sluggo2007
@Maleko: Stockholm Syndrome
Joe
Karma is a bitch. This will come back to haunt him. I refuse to mention anything on his looks.
NoCagada
@alphacentauri: When you’re done eating, you really should look up how toxoplasmosis is acquired
loren_1955
Seems that the only fact that matters is the fellow is a total smug jerk that does not deserve being called human.