It looks as though Martin Shkreli’s claim that in order for his pharmaceutical company to stay afloat he had to jack up the price Daraprim, a drug used to treat life-threatening parasitic infections, by more than 5,000 percent was a bunch of B.S.
Shkreli made headlines this week when he raised price from $13.50 to $750 a tablet literally overnight. (FYI: The tablets cost approximately $1 each to produce.)
“This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients,” he told the New York Times. “It is us trying to stay in business.”
Related: Ex-Hedge Funder Buys Rights To AIDS Drug, Raises Price 5,455 Percent
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Shkreli was on the receiving end of a social media backlash of epic proportions, and labeled “America’s most hated man” by multiple media outlets. Shkeril’s snarky attitude on Twitter did not help his cause.
After eight hours of outcry, the 32-year-old ex-hedge-funder-turned-pharmaceutical-price-gouger says he’s lowering the price.
“Yes, it is absolutely a reaction,” Shkreli told NBC News. “There were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action. I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people.”
He continued: “It’s very easy to see a large drug price increase and say ‘Gosh, those people must be gouging.’ But when you find out that the company is not really making any money, what does that mean?”
Related: Price-Gouging Pharma CEO Can’t Seem To Handle The Entire Internet Hating Him After All
Shkreli went on to say that the situation is “very hard stuff” for non-business people to “understand” and implied that folks were getting far too emotionally wrapped up in the whole thing.
“I think in the society we live in today it’s easy to want to villainize people,” he said. “Obviously, we’re in an election cycle where this is very, very tough topic for people and it’s very sensitive. And I understand the outrage.”
Shkreli did not say what the new price of Daraprim will be, though he did say he’s concerned it won’t make him much moola. That totally sucks, man.
“We’ll know in several weeks how profitable the drug is, if it at all,” he said. “It may turn out that’s it not even profitable at all, even at this price.”
And as we all know, when it comes to healthcare in America, it must turn a profit. Otherwise, as Shkreli says, “what does it mean?”
Related: Can We Blame Wall Street For All the AIDS Patients Now On Waiting Lists?
Desert Boy
Martin Shkreli has dead eyes. Like a shark. He has no humanity. None at all. This is what you see in serial killers.
Lawrence Gisonda
greedy prick
Kelvin Johnson
This POS is the type person i could watch get hit by a bus and keep drinking my coffee.
GayEGO
Martin Shkreli has that greedy look of many Hedge Funders, CEOs, Enron Executive and Bernie Madoff types. Our freedom to make as much money as we want needs to have transparency to protect us from the greedys.
Frank Mosca
I notice he mentions nothing about the ‘new’ price, so what’s it going to be = $300, $550, $8? What? As for his snarky ‘very hard stuff” crap. No, even as a business person, it’s hard to understand. There is profit, which is what drives business and keeps one in business to help others and there is obscene profit, which is merely price gouging and a return to the unbridled robber barons. Personally? I hope Retrophin wins their $65 million suite case against this snide S.O.B.
haringfan1
Two words: Smug Punk
Scott Rose
We should be looking very closely at why today in Canada, they can purchase this same medication for about $1.25 per pill.
sfbeast
He has the look of someone who is very pleased with himself and could care less about anyone else. He should go back home and live with his parents until he learns some respect and manners.
CL Lassiter
I’m not celebrating until I know what the new price will be and probably not then either.
Cam
This is part of the problem in the U.S. and why our manufacturing and business community has become so damaged.
These folks make nothing, build nothing, they just manipulate the market and cash in.
That is why, even during a recession the Stock Market can zoom higher without bringing the economy with it, or why, even though unemployment is low and the economy is doing far better now, the stock market can still crash.
The markets are pretty much severed from the real everyday economy of the country now.
He just looked around, found a drug that was old, still in use, and bought it to gouge consumers. He was just so ham handed and stupid about it that he got too much attention. But the problem is, there are tons of people just like him who are doing the same thing, only they would have just raised the price of the pill up to $80 a pill and flown completely under the radar.
pjm1
This CEO has now made a number of public statements that raising
the price of the drug is essential for the company to stay in business.
As CEO, he has a responsibility under the law to be forthright to the public
and investors.
The SEC along with the California Attorney General, the New York AG and others
need to open investigations into the veracity Shkreli’s comments. It is serious
stuff if a CEO is making false statements to the market and public.
Kenneth Myrnes
One piece of advice Mr. Shkrel! Never consume any of that medication yourself, as it is used for treatment of parasites!!
John Riley
liquidskyny
@sfbeast: Mommy and Daddy are more than likely a HUGE part of his bratty arrogant priveleged behavior. Someone at his age being a hedge fund manager is due in part to he was given that job not on merit but based on his family being within a specific upper-class social circle.
1EqualityUSA
Desert Boy, Serial killer eyes is right. I Youtubed him. Watch the inappropriate smile that he consciously removes from his face when he speaks. wow. So creepy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkgFA9q7w0w
NJjoe
Greedy bastard!
Martin Owen
What a little bitch he is!!
mezzacanadese
I hope this man never gets a disease that requires a very expensive drug. True, he can afford it, but it would leave him with less money for yachts and jewels and other necessities.
Anders Bergkvist
Not going to make a killing … well that is exactly what I think this type of greed is – pure and straight forward murder.
Jerry Kelley
Who is this raging asshole?
redcarpet30
Brain dead shit stain. I’m sick of pretending being privileged, rich, lucky, and knowing a little bit of statistics makes you “smarter” than everyone else in the world. He’s just a greedy, arrogant, willfully ignorant, and awful human being.
And really, what good is intelligence if you do terrible things with it?
Jeffrey Cummings
This man will be punished greatly!
Brian JC Kneeland
He has no morals at all – so there must be a way to shut down his company!
mcflyer54
This man has absolutely no credibility. Shkreli did NOT discover this drug nor was he in any way responsible for the formulation of the drug. Shkreli bought this 62 year old drug from another pharmaceutical company. All of the costs related to the research and getting this drug to the marketplace were long long long ago recovered (and, if the truth be known it is very possible that some of the funding for the research to uncover this formula was paid from by a US government grant).
Shkreli grossly overpaid for a product that has been readily, and reasonably, available from many many years but, because of formula manipulation and additional usage studies, has avoided the manufacturer of a generic equivalent. Shkreli is, or was, a hedge fund manager – he buys things speculating that he can jack them up to a point of profitability regardless of his initial cost. Unfortunately, for Mr. Shkreli at least, he just happened to pick the wrong item to over spend on and will now hopefully struggle to make a profit – and rightly so.
Bisexual-Transwoman
I read about this. It’s not as though he’s not wealthy already.
Chris Duffy
He’s a symptom, nothing more. The real disease is the sociopathic pursuit of profit, the worship of greed, and the lionization of those who can out-douchebag everyone else. In 1985 Oliver Stone created Gordon Gekko as a warning. Now he’s an idol. It’s up to all of us to send a constant message: being a rich dick is never cool.
Kevin White
It cost a dollar, that’s $1.00, to make. He’s a jerk all the way around.
Eric Michener
I like how he makes snarky comments about people not understanding business. It sounds like he is the person who doesn’t understand business if he paid a price for the drug that would not allow him to turn a profit without raising the cost of a drug that is already charging consumers over 1000% of the cost to produce.
Chris Inava
This guy is disgusting. He deserves the rare skin eating disease that he’ll probably get and die in three days. Good riddens! Burn in hell buddy!
kb7rky
He’s so full of shit, I can smell the stink on him from here.
What a pathetic, greedy little man. Fuck him and everyone like him.
Lance Mullholland
Shouldn’t this drug be generic by now? Enough time has passed for the patent to expire!
The pope mentioned “preditory humans” today in D.C., taking advantage of the poor and powerless. He made me think of folks like Mr. Shkreli – the wolves ravaging the sheep.
There will be a Final Judgement and accounting – watch and see, like it or not…
Jorge Albertto
Gary Harryman
It’s time all civilized societies took the profit out of the necessities of life – including pharmaceuticals. Profit should only be legal where choice is a matter of taste – not a matter of living or dying. “Give me all your money or die” is criminal extortion and it should not be tolerated by civilized people because it is a quiet form of parasitical profiteering tyranny.
notevenwrong
This is what the U.S. gets for its unregulated capitalistic system that maximally rewards psychopaths.
Kieru
I really wish blogs would stop just copying and pasting the inaccurate headline from RawStory. Daraprim is no more an “AIDS Drug” than Tylenol. Daraprim treats malaria as well as a parasitic infection, the latter of which happens to be potentially fatal in people with weakened or compromised immune systems.
It does not treat HIV/AIDS. It is not an AIDS drug.
The story is horrible enough as is without pretending that he is also compromising the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS.
Sweetie Pie
I can´t wait for Brazil and India to start producing a generic version…he´ll have to use all those pills a as a suppository
Glücklich
Goddammit this creep ranks right up there with PE firms that buy up distressed companies to raid the pensions or leverage the shit out of the real estate! Gives everyone in finance a bad name as if we didn’t already have enough of a problem of optics.
Tobi
@Scott Rose: In the UK it’s 66¢ a pop and still profitable.
Faye Denton
I can’t print on here what I think of this j***. I do know that he will get his reward. I’d still like to know how he got in this position. He and greed driven people like this are disgusting.
billeetee
Not to worry, Martin, I’m sure The Rump will find a place for you in his campaign. After all, he loves Losers like himself.
Rick Holtz
No matter what he does for the rest of his life he’ll always be known as a
POS. Or worse.
Michael Clifford
“Shkreli went on to say that the situation is â??very hard stuffâ? for non-business people to â??understandâ? and implied that folks were getting far too emotionally wrapped up in the whole thing.” People’s lives are at stake! Of course they’ll be emotionally wrapped up in it. Maybe we should all become hedge fund people so we can become as emotionally cut off as he is.
Alex Kyle-Thundershield Simmons
He looks like he just shat his pants and is now relishing in the smell of his own excremate and the moistness between his cheeks.
Fucking creeper.
Matt Defo
Greedy SCUM !
David Scrivens
Don’t you just love that smirk on his money hungry face.
Michael Clifford
From Turing Pharmo’s own website: “We are dedicated to helping patients, who often have limited or no effective treatment options, by developing and commercializing innovative treatments for serious diseases and conditions across a broad range of therapeutic areas.” Really??? Helping patients? Doing what? Go bankrupt or die?
Kangol
@Scott Rose: Thank. You.
Remember, American health insurance enrollees almost had the same opportunity that Canadians have until Big Pharma clamped down on Obama and the Dems and forced government negotiation of prescription drug prices out of the Affordable Care Act.
It’s all about the (Big Pharma) benjamins!
Michael Clifford
Also on their own website, a 9-18-15 news piece put out by them. “Our number one priority is to ensure that all patients diagnosed with toxoplasmosis have an efficient and affordable means to access Daraprim.” They actually said that with a straight face.
Hal-James Pederson
“Killing” seems to be a very apt word.
NateOcean
Well, Trump is getting old, so it’s nice to see the next generation of arrogant souless, psychopathic puss-buckets on their way up.
Kirk Montrealer
His penis must be very very small.
Neil Stoodley
I’ve never advocated violence before, but I’m really struggling with my morals right now.
Damon Robbins
This guy comes of as a read dickhead!
Maxie Grant
Pissed he’s not going to be killing needy patients, right? Poor baby.
Billy Budd
Disgusting creature.
Robert Cella
Douche bag!
Jean Philippe Laplagne
Greedy little punk!
Billy Budd
He is just a kid and already a CEO. Corporate america rewards greediness.
specialbottom
The greedy smirk on this asshole makes me want to puke. The answer to this kind of market manipulation is regulation (excessive profile tax).
Kirk Montrealer
Does he not remind you of ‘SQUIGGY’ from ‘Laverne & Shirley’ ?
Abbie Robinson
What’s the price down to though?
Aubrey Graumann
How are you going to turn a profit selling something nobody can afford to buy? I think this dumbass is the one who doesn’t understand how money works.
Don Hanover
he lacks even a pretense of compassionâ?¦ a genuine poster child for greedy capitalistic plundering â?¦ the pharm big wigs hate that he has focused a spot light on their business as usual pillage for profit scheme
Kathryn Kroll
the kiling me makes might be his own death.
Gus Anderson
If he walked through a wood chipper, I promise I would not cheer….much.
Amaurys Arias
Psychopath
Mkiel
@Kelvin Johnson: @Kelvin Johnson: & we will all dance on his grave.
MELVIN BELL III
He hiked the price so that he may continue to support his drug habit, that makes him think he’s attractive…Tweaker alert!
eclecticstarz
When paleontologists look at our ancient ancestors bones one of the defining moments, the changes that marked us out form other animals was evidence that we cared for those that could not contribute to the tribe/family group anymore. Evidence was found of individuals who had injury’s or ailments which meant they would of died with out others caring for them, all this long before a time with no money or trade….. just compassion and love. Do not, however look on this man as an example of greed, in the world of pharmaceuticals and hedge funds he is pretty average. He also looks like if his granny was chocking on a dime he would bite open her throat, pull out the dime and put it in a savings box and charge her for calling the ambulance.
bicurious
This guy isn’t even sexy in the way killers, criminals, sociopaths, often are. Even Mark Zuckerberg is kind of sexy but this guy, not one bit.
Joshua Decker
why is he even a CEO for? and honestly how many people do he expect would buy from him? i would love to see how it goes. cause next thing he knows no one will buy from him and he’ll be wondering what he’s doing wrong. . . moron.
Roger Honeycutt
Easiest.way he can make a killing is to jump off a bridge.
Michael Heathfield
What he really needs is to have every employee walk out on him!
Rob Jameson
They had already raised the price once, from $1 a dose, to $13.50 a dose. He just thought he’d get away with another gouge and nobody would say anything.
OzJosh
@Gary Harryman: At the very least there should be laws to guard against this type of outrageous exploitation. Any company or individual caught at this kind of gouging should be de-registered, prevented from operating any business for a period, and fined proportionately to the profits they’ve immorally extracted.
SeeingAll
@Joshua Decker: He’s not a moron, though, which is what makes his actions so much more contemptible.
SeeingAll
Actually, he looks just like that Matthew Rettenmund blogger if you really consider it. that Stewie Griffin face.
Robin Sinn
If you want to “save” YOUR company, it should not be at other people’s expense, especially patients. After all, it is YOUR business and the profits will go into your deep fucking pockets alone.
Richard Hathaway
Evil.
Brian
Some of these drugs manufacturers have already made a killing by selling anti-HIV pills to gullible gay men. An absolute killing. I’m not speaking just figuratively, I’m also speaking literally.
The anti-HIV drugs are toxic to the human body and will cause wasting and other horrible symptoms which further weaken the human body. In many cases, the symptoms from the anti-HIV drugs are worse than the symptoms associated with AIDS.
Gay men need to wake up. You’ve been had.
James Jurome
You could apply this guys logic to every other pharma company out there
Glenn Cheatham
Smug bastard!!!!
Jason Barrett
Sleazy douchebag….
seasailor
He is no different than every other business leader out there in the world today. The exception is that he got busted and bowed to the pressure.
Catherine Black
Someone still needs to smack that smug ass look off his face …
Billy Budd
His hair is greasy and he has a very weird smile. He is disgusting.
martinbakman
The health care industry is loaded with nefarious, greedy pricks, with seemingly no concern for patient welfare.
Rob Felber
What a smug prick.
MarionPaige
Take a look at that kid in the video. Does that kid look like someone who wants to spend his youth testing and / or selling speciality drugs to treat ailments that only affect a small number of people?
Could all this be about THIS KID inciting the public to buy this drug company from him (at a nice little profit to him)? On another note,
According to rumor, an extremely wealthy man who is now making a name for himself supplying drugs free or at very low cost to poor nations reportedly personally invests in the drug companies that his non profit buys the drugs from. So, in effect, it is claimed that this wealthy individual actually PROFITS from having his foundation supply free drugs to poor nations.
Monaco3000
Don’t we all remember some slimy little rich-kid pricks from high school that match this guy 100%
SonOfKings
His looks alone are enough to make someone sick.
Finrod
He’s in trouble with the law for crooked financial dealings and for threatening a former colleague and his family. Repeatedly. He’s not just a psychopath; he’s a not-yet-convicted felon.
Daul Pettmann
I still want to know why it is legal for anyone to own an exclusive patent on a 62 year old drug.
Steve Davies
Meanwhile, in the UK, this stuff sells for about 90 cents. Social medicine, you see.
gaym50ish
Why would he purchase the rights to a drug if it was really so unprofitable at the going price at the time? Doesn’t that mean he paid way too much for it?
Andrew Vermaak
What a standup guy……… NOT!!!!!
1EqualityUSA
Shkrelied…a new verb?
Philip Martin
Why would you post an article without the new price???
Douglas Schlitz
Screw that greedy little dick !
ParisHiltonsBadEye
He has creepy rat’s eyes. I just want to give him a piece of cheese – in a mousetrap!
Korree Johnson
He looks like the grinch
SeeingAll
@Korree Johnson: good observation
daveku
Before everyone gets their Andrew Christians in a twist and start shouting me down or calling me names…
Yes, the guy is a complete ass (kind of cute though.. come on admit it!)
That being said, to quote my doctor,
“Daraprim is not an aids drug. it is no more an aids drug as vitamin c is a glaucoma drug’ It is an old malaria drug. he doesn’t even prescribe it and says there are better parasitic drugs out there that work better and are easier to take.
From Web MD… “This medication is used with other medication (such as a sulfonamide) to treat a serious parasite infection (toxoplasmosis) of the body, brain, or eye or to prevent toxoplasmosis infection in people with HIV infection”
Juanjo
@daveku: You are correct that this is not an HIV drug but it is the go to drug for toxoplasmosis as well as malaria. It is used to treat acute malaria as well as for malaria prophylaxis. I used it for malaria prophylaxis in the 1980s on a trip to the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. I used it last year for a trip to India.
stranded
EVERYONE is using that picture of him smiling like a little kid. He just looks like everything that is wrong with the world. I would hate if this is one of these overnight outcries, people lose interest in by next week.