Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Martin Shkreli / Daraprim (Turing) (I)

Martin Shkreli es una «basura monstruosa» y un «sociópata moralmente quebrado» para parte de la opinión pública de Estados Unidos. Todo se debe al anuncio de Shkreli, director ejectivo de la farmacéutica Turing, de subir más de un 5.000% el precio de un fármaco para personas con el sistema inmune debilitado. 

Personas con este problema, como los pacientes con sida, dependen del medicamento–adquirido recientemente por la farmacéutica– que, hasta hace poco costaba alrededor de 13.50 dólares la dosis. Pero Shkreli, el joven director ejecutivo de 32 años, anunció que estaría cobrando 750 dólares por pastilla, como recoge BBC Mundo. 

El fármaco es conocido como Daraprim y, desde su creación en los 50, se ha convertido en el mejor tratamiento para una infección parasítica relativamente rara conocida como toxoplasmosis. 

 Shkreli sostiene que el incremento en el precio de Daraprim era justificado porque el fármaco es altamente especializado. Las ganancias, señaló, serán utilizadas para mejorar la receta del medicamento que ya tiene 62 años. Pero sus argumentos no fueron suficientes para frenar la indignación de la gente. En redes sociales como twitter se le llamó «escoria» que representa «todo lo malo que tiene el capitalismo». 

Pero Shkreli no se tomó a la ligera las críticas vertidas contra su empresa. El pasado domingo, publicó un tuit hostil acusando a los medios de señalarlo selectivamente. «Parece que los medios me señalan con el dedo inmediatamente. Así que yo también los señalo con el dedo, pero no con el índice ni el meñique», escribió. 

El coletazo público ha sido tan intenso que Shkreli ahora dijo a la cadena ABC que reducirían el precio a una cifra más módica, que permita a la empresa generar «una ganancia pequeña», aunque no especificó el costo exacto. «Esperamos que estos cambios sean bienvenidos», ha indicado.

Quién es...

Martin Shkreli, hijo de inmigrantes albaneses y croatas, se crió en un vecindario de clase trabajadora en Brooklyn, Nueva York. Saltó varios grados en la escuela y se graduó en administración del Baruch College de Nueva York, en 2004. 

En 2006, Shkreli empezó su propio fondo de cobertura, Elea Capital Management. La empresa cerró un año más tarde, después de una demanda de 2,3 millones de dólares entablada por Lehman Brothers, que quebró antes de poder cobrar. 

Después de Elea, Shkreli inició MSMB Capital Management, en 2008. Ese fondo sería su plataforma de lanzamiento para fundar empresas de biotecnología, incluyendo Turing. 
 (Más)

Throughout the past three days’ escalating furore about Turing Pharmaceuticals ’ proposed 4,000% price hike for the toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim the biopharma sector has been deafening in its near-silence on drug pricing. 

And well it might have been; cynics would say that it suits the industry to have a neat scapegoat in Turing, all the while hiking drug costs in its own right. But now a new analysis of EvaluatePharma data can reveal that, when it comes to escalating prices Turing is by no means the only culprit (see tables below).

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Y ahora..."Pharma Bro`Martin Shkreli` newsletter

 

Fué noticia, hasta entró en prisión...

Ahora quiere ´vendernos´  noticias 

Y...le pone precio. 

De eso sabe bastante

Ver:

Todo sobre  Martin Shkreli en PHARMACOSERIAS

The first entry of "Martin's Newsletter" was subtitled 

"This post was written in prison."

Martin Shkreli, nicknamed the ‘Pharma Bro,’ launched a new newsletter on Substack Thursday afternoon.

Shkreli’s newsletter, titled ‘Martin’s Newsletter,’ will focus on “investing, science and technology.”

He said that his first post, titled “5/11 – meet me on / quaternion,” was written in prison. Shkreli was serving a seven-year sentence for a 2017 conviction on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Shkreli made national headlines in 2015 as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, (now Vyera Pharmaceuticals) for raising the price of a life-saving drug.

Shkreli debuted the newsletter just over a month after he received an early release from FCI Allenwood Low. The newsletter debut comes as the New York Post reported that activist investors are engaged in a shareholder battle for Turing and that Shkreli cannot vote his shares.

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Condenado Martin Shkreli (exdirectivo de Turin)

Se le conoce como el ejecutivo más odiado de Estados Unidos, un título disputado en el reino de los tiburones financieros, y se enfrenta a hasta 20 años de cárcel. Un tribunal de Nueva York ha condenado por fraude y conspiración al exdirectivo farmacéutico y exgestor de fondos de alto riesgo Martin Shkreli, por haber inflado en un 5.455% el precio de un medicamento para curar la toxoplasmosis, una enfermedad que ataca sobre todo a embarazadas y enfermos de sida. 

Shkreli, de 34 años, había sido arrestado en diciembre de 2015 tras una larga investigación del FBI. Los fiscales federales acusaban a Shkreli de haber mentido y defraudado a los inversores de los fondos que gestionaba. El Tribunal del barrio neoyorquino de Brooklyn, que ha llegado a un acuerdo tras cuatro semanas de juicio y cinco días de deliberaciones, ha declarado finalmente culpable al exdirectivo de Turin Pharmaceuticals de tres de los ocho cargos de los que estaba acusado y lo ha exculpado de cinco delitos de conspiración, incluido el saqueo de Retrophin, su laboratorio biofarmacéutico. Aunque aún no se sabe cuántos años de cárcel tendrá que cumplir finalmente, el abogado presentó el veredicto como algo cercano a una victoria, ya que su defendido podría evitar ir a prisión o recibir una pena “mucho menor” que la contemplada por la Fiscalía.

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Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Martin Shkreli / Daraprim (Turing)

El propio Shkreli lo celebró a la salida del juzgado —“Hemos sido absueltos de los cargos más importantes”, dijo— y tan solo una hora después, de vuelta a su apartamento de Nueva York, comentó la jugada a través de su canal de Youtube. “Esto ha sido una caza de brujas de proporciones épicas”, había afirmado antes. 

Shkreli, hijo de inmigrantes albaneses, fundó su primer fondo de inversión con 21 años. En 2012, creó Retrophin Pharmaceuticals, una compañía dedicada al tratamiento de enfermedades raras. A los dos años sus acciones se habían revalorizado de 3 a 20 dólares. Vendió su participación y abrió Turing Pharmaceuticals. En 2015 la empresa compró Daraprim, un fármaco usado contra la toxoplasmosis. 

El precio de las pastillas se disparó de los 13,5 dólares (11,5 euros) a los 750 dólares (637 euros) de la noche a la mañana. La prensa lo bautizó como el hombre más odiado de Estados Unidos. (Ver)

TURING´s Ceo, Martin Shkrli, arrestado / Daraprim...“Schadenfreude*.”

Turing chief executive Martin Shkreli been arrested on a charge of securities fraud relating to a company he founded, Bloomberg reports. 

Prosecutors are examining whether the pharma executive illegally took stock during his time at his previous company Retrophin, which he founded in 2011, and used it to pay off personal business debts to hedge fund investors. Shkreli served as chief executive of Retrophin before being ousted from the company and sued by the board in August. 

The charges relate to Shkreli’s now-defunct hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management. He is alleged to have engineered transactions between MSMB investors and biotech firm Retrophin, following a trade with Merrill Lynch which cost the hedge fund more than $7 million. Retrophin said the 32-year-old Turing executive paid off as many as 10 investors through fake consulting arrangements and unauthorised appropriations of cash and stock. 

Earlier this year, Shkreli called the company's allegations “completely false, untrue at best and defamatory at worst.” He later said the $65 million Retrophin wants “would not dent me.” 

Albanian-born Shkreli has hit the headlines numerous times in 2015, beginning with his company's 5000% price-hike on the price of the anti-parasitic treatment Daraprim after Turing acquired the drug earlier this year. 


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Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Martin Shkreli / Daraprim (Turing)

More recently, he was revealed as the $2 million buyer of the only available copy of a new Wu-Tang Clan album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The hip-hop group’s founder, RZA, has since said they were not aware of Shkreli’s business dealings when they made the deal. 

 Last month, he became chief executive of another pharmaceutical start-up, taking a controlling 70% stake in KaloBios, now the owner of a treatment for another parasitic treatment, benznidazole. The company has since announced plans to substantially raise the price of this drug. While it currently costs around $100 for a month’s supply, KaloBios reportedly intends to increase this to a price structure reflective of those in place in the US for hepatitis C drugs, which can reach as much as $100,000 for a three-month supply. 

An estimated 300,000 people in the US have Chagas disease. The third most common parasitic disease worldwide is also known as the ‘kissing bug diease.’

“Schadenfreude.” 

Among the general public, the reaction on social media was gleeful. 

Peter LaMotte, a consultant who works with pharmaceutical and biotech companies at the Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm Levick, said he had never seen more people online use the word “schadenfreude.” (...)

Baum, the chief executive of the compounder that competes with Turing, said he would welcome a political focus on pricing policies.

“I don’t think this is a time to gloat, I don’t think this is a time to be happy,” he said. “It’s really a time for policymakers to buckle down and end these practices.”

The biggest thing pharma companies can do to distance themselves from Shkreli is to be transparent, said LaMotte, the public relations consultant.

“What executives and boards have to do is make sure that their actions cannot be associated in any way with his behavior,” LaMotte said. “They want to make sure that they are taking actions that show … they are ethical players in this industry and for their shareholders.” (Más)

Ver también:
Shkreli resigns post as Turing Pharma CEO, will be replaced by chairman Ron Tilles

(*) Schadenfreude: a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people

Turing Pharmaceuticals: ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli fined $64M, banned from drug industry

 

Convicted “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli has been ordered to return $64 million in profits his company made by inflating the price of a life-saving drug, a federal judge in New York ruled on Friday.

Shkreli, who is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for securities fraud after he was convicted in 2017, is also barred from ever working in the pharmaceutical industry again.

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Todo sobre  Shkreli, Daraprim y Turing Pharmaceuticals en PHARMACOSERÍAS

US District Judge Denise Cote handed down the ruling on Friday, ending a weeks-long civil lawsuit brought against Shkreli by the Federal Trade Commission and seven states.

Shkreli, who is currently behind bars at a low-security federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, became one of the most-hated executives in America.

In 2015, Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, acquired the rights to Daraprim, a life-saving drug that is used to treat infections that occur in patients suffering from cancer and AIDS.

Turing, which is now known as Vyera, then raised the price of the drug from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill.

According to court papers, Shkreli said at the time that the move “should be a very handsome investment for all of us.”

He defended the decision as capitalism at work and said insurance and other programs ensure that people who need Daraprim would ultimately get it.

Más

"Shitstorm" en torno a precios / De Martin Shkreli a Epipen...

Martin Shkreli is an unsung hero. 

By creating a media shitstorm 

with the gigantic price hike, 

the pharmaceutical industry 

will be subjected to tougher regulations 

and their business model 

will be carefully controlled 

thus avoiding any similar situation as this / 

The True Nobody

 

• a situation marked by violent controversy. 
• is a vulgar dysphemism for a chaotic and unpleasant situation. 
• a terrible mess, literally or figuratively.

Mylan cannot foresee the giant shitstorm 
when kids start dying 
because Mommys can't buy medicine? 
SportsJournalists.com

Sex and the City actress Sarah Jessica Parker announced she has ended her relationship with Mylan, the pharmaceutical company behind the EpiPen, following reports of price gouging. (The price of a standard two-pack of EpiPens increased from $100 in 2009 to $600 in 2016.) (Más)


Ver: 
Price hiking: US pharma’s elephant in the room

Martin Shkreli:

I should point out that, by now, 
after enduring a huge internet 
shitstorm backlash, 
Shkreli has agreed 
to lower the price of the drug (Más)

The 20 most expensive drugs in the USA

.

Takeda is about to buy its way to a number 1 spot in the top tier of drugmakers fielding the most expensive drugs on the planet.

Once its $62 billion Shire buyout goes through, Takeda will be responsible for selling three of the 20 most expensive drugs on the market today, according to the latest list from GoodRx. And that’s more than any other manufacturer on the ranking.

Why 20 this year, instead of their trademark top 10?

The drug pricing analysts at GoodRx decided that they needed to double the number of drugs tracked in order to be able to fully capture the growing ranks of therapies that command wholesale prices of more than $25,000 a month.

Number 1 (again): Actimmune from Horizon Pharma, which lists at $52,322 a month.

With rare diseases a hot field in drug R&D, we’ve seen a raft of new medications that cost well into six figures a year. Shire’s three are Cinryze, in at the number 3 spot for $44,141; the newly approved Takhzyro, number 4 at a dollar less — $44,140; and Firazyr, $32,468.

While high drug prices remains one of the hottest topics in Washington DC, the financial toxicity has failed to blunt even the most controversial price on the list. Daraprim, marketed by Vyera — the successor to Turing, founded by now federal prison inmate Martin Shkreli — holds the number 2 spot, with a list price of $45,000 a month.

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Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Martin Shkreli / Daraprim (Turing) (I)

The drug is decades old, off patent, and the inflated price has been in the public spotlight for 3 years. Public outrage, congressional hearings and a 7-year sentence for investor fraud, though, haven’t put a dent in Shkreli’s legal and not so uncommon pricing strategy.

Daraprim’s price is higher than the WAC on Luxturna, a gene therapy for a rare, genetically triggered eye disease that causes people to go blind, which lists at $850,000 for a one-time use.

Shkreli has another drug on this list, as well. The fraudster also founded Retrophin, where he jacked up the price of Chenodal five-fold. Shkreli got booted out of the company, but the price remained intact. GoodRx figured the monthly list price at $42,570, though patients could wind up taking anywhere from 90 to 210 pills per month, at a cost of $473 a tablet.

As Shkreli taught the world, the age of a drug doesn’t always detract from the price. Cuprimine, notes GoodRx, has been around since the ’70s, yet Valeant still uses a list price of $261.89 a tablet — around $28,000 a month. And while hep C drug costs have come way down, GoodRx analysts still figure the list price of Gilead’s Harvoni at $31,500 a month while Sovaldi registers at $28,000 a month.

To be sure, the list price — as any pharma marketer will tell you first — is the number they start with, discounting down as they work with payers on price. GoodRx made sure to note just how many of the top 20 manufacturers have worked to ensure that there’s a low, direct out-of-pocket for these drugs.

But there’s still a steep price to be paid by insurers, which is passed on to members through monthly fees, while the figures remain a potent symbol of the wave of pricey drugs that remain for years on the list.(Ver)

Trump ya tiene "quien le aplauda"...Martin Shkreli

 

RealAmericanLiberal

Martin Shkreli, better known throughout the world as “Pharma Bro,” is betting on Donald Trump to bring pharmaceutical jobs back to the U.S. 

“Donald Trump is a dream for business people like me,” Shkreli said during an exclusive interview with FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. “I think Trump’s going to make pharma great again.” 

 The former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO, who first made headlines for sharply increasing the price of a widely-used HIV/AIDS drug, said Trump’s proposed policies will make the industry more competitive.

Ver:
 TURING´s Ceo, Martin Shkrli, arrestado / Daraprim...“Schadenfreude*.”

“Almost all pharma manufacturing right now is done in India and China and the quality of manufacturing pharmaceuticals has declined dramatically,” he said. “Bringing those jobs and manufacturing to the U.S. – I think that can only help us.” 

He added, “I think Trump’s going to make it easier to be a drug company in America.” 

When asked whether he would be willing to talk to Trump about pharmaceutical policy, Shkreli said he is more than eager to do so. 

“Sure, the same way he ran on a platform that he’s the best to close loopholes and to close exploitations because he’s the one who took advantage of them,” Shkreli said. (Ver)

The 20 most expensive drugs

.

Eli Lilly pushed its way onto the top-20 list with its acquisition of Loxo, now out with their site-agnostic, and very expensive, cancer drug Vitrakvi. That lines the pharma giant alongside fraudster Martin Shkreli, who retains a prominent position despite being in prison. And a struggling Novelion — which emerged out of a merger involving a deeply troubled Aegerion — gets the award for single largest price hike with a big move up in the top 10 right at the beginning of the year. 

Ver:

The 20 most expensive drugs in the USA

 

(...)

Horizon, which retained its hold on the most expensive drug on the list at $52,322 a month for Actimmune, also joined the price hike club, with a 4.9% price hike on Ravicti, now in the 10th spot. Sanofi, meanwhile, boosted the price of Cerdelga by 5%, putting that therapy at number 19.

Gilead’s profile has been lowered after it came out with a generic version of Harvoni and Zavesca, retaining a slot with Sovaldi at $28,000 a month.

Shire, now Takeda, has the most drugs on the top 20 drugs, which are all marketed with a list price north of $25,000 a month: Cinryze (4), Takhzyro (5) and Firazyr (12).

 
And Shkreli — otherwise known as prisoner number 87850-053 — has a grip on the number 3 ranking with its old, generic drug daraprim sold at a list price of $45,000 a month.

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Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Martin Shkreli / Daraprim (Turing)

According to the Wall Street Journal, Shkreli has been managing Vyera — which used to be called Turing and now is called Phoenixus — by means of a contraband cell phone. Now he’s under investigation again, which should be easier this time now that he’s behind bars.

Not to be forgotten is Retrophin’s Chenodal, which qualified as one of the most expensive drugs on the market while Shkreli ran the show — before he was kicked out.

Nostrum: Antibiótico del escandaloso incremento de precio...

.  

"Creo que es un requisito moral 

vender un producto 

al mayor precio posible" 

Nirmal Mulye (Nostrum)

Con estas palabras al Financial Times justificaba Nirmal Mulye, director ejecutivo de la farmacéutica Nostrum, la última gran subida de precio de un medicamento.

El fármaco en cuestión es la nitrofurantoína, un antibiótico para las infecciones de orina calificado como esencial por la Organización Mundial de la Salud y que ha pasado de costar unos 475 dólares a casi 2.400.

"Esta es una economía capitalista y quien no sea capaz de hacer dinero no puede seguir en el negocio", concluyó. 

El caso de la nitrofurantoína es el enésimo episodio de las grandes subidas de precio de algunos medicamentos en los últimos años. Una tendencia a la que aún no se ha puesto freno a pesar de las advertencias de varias organizaciones.

"I agree with Martin Shkreli 

that when he raised the price of his drug 

he was within his rights 

because he had to reward 

his shareholders"

Nirmal Mulye

Ver:

Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Martin Shkreli / Daraprim (Turing)

"La escalada de precios de medicamentos que son esenciales para la vida o destinados a enfermedades graves es clara", explica a eldiario.es la directora de la plataforma Salud por Derecho, Vanessa López. "Los altos precios de los medicamentos están dificultando el acceso a los mismos y hay gente que muere por este motivo". 

 Según López, las palabras de Mulye "son una inmoralidad" y señala a los gobiernos por no tomar las medidas necesarias. "El problema es que se trata a los fármacos como si fueran un producto de consumo cualquiera", asegura esta activista, que reclama que los medicamentos sean "tratados como un bien público, ya que de ellos depende la vida de las personas".(Más)

Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Daraprim (Turing) / Marcia Angell* (II)

The $750 pill: Why do drug companies charge so much?
Marcia Angell*

In 1953, a new drug was released by Burroughs Wellcome, a pharmaceutical company based in London. Pyrimethamine, as the compound was named, was originally intended to fight malaria after the microorganisms that cause the disease developed resistance to earlier therapies. The drug was used against malaria for several decades, often in combination with other compounds. It’s mostly used now to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be life-threatening in people whose immune systems are suppressed, for example, by HIV/​AIDS or cancer. 

More than 40 years later, Burroughs Wellcome merged with the British pharmaceutical giant Glaxo. In 2010, the company, now GlaxoSmithKline, sold the U.S. rights to pyrimethamine — which is marketed under the brand name Daraprim — to another firm, CorePharma. By then, the patent on the drug had long since expired, but because nobody bothered to make a generic, Daraprim was essentially a monopoly. 

In August, there was another significant development in the drug’s history: CorePharma’s parent company, Impax Laboratories, sold it to Turing Pharmaceuticals. Almost immediately, the company raised the price from $18 a pill to $750, a more-than-40-fold increase, and then sent out its brash chief executive, Martin Shkreli, to aggressively defend the new cost.

Ver:
Martin MShkreli, a provocateur in the pharmaceutical wars 

A course of treatment for toxoplasmosis is about 100 pills, which under the new pricing would run $75,000. Why the astonishing increase? The answer is: Why not? 

Unlike every other advanced country, the United States permits drug companies to charge patients whatever they choose. (In this case, with Daraprim’s patent expired, Turing is probably in a hurry to make as much as possible before a generic version can enter the market. It announced after the fury over the increase that it would lower the price again, but you can bet it won’t fall all the way back to $18 a pill.) In Britain, in contrast, GlaxoSmithKline sells the drug for 66 cents a pill, and in India, it costs even less. 

 The new U.S. price grabbed public attention because it was so sudden and extreme. But exorbitant charges for drugs that treat serious diseases are hardly unusual. Avastin, for example, a cancer medication of dubious benefit, can cost close to $100,000 for a year’s treatment. And prices for almost all prescription drugs are rising much faster than the background inflation rate. 

Drug companies say high prices are necessary to cover their research and development costs, enabling them to discover innovative new medicines. Turing says it planned to use the profits from Daraprim’s higher price to fund research into better treatments for toxoplasmosis. 

But in fact, Daraprim illustrates the way most drugs are priced: They are invented not by the companies that sell them now but by someone else. Then, like big fish swallowing little fish, larger companies either buy small firms outright or license promising drugs from them. 

Very often, the original discovery occurs in a university lab with public funding from the National Institutes of Health, then licensed to a start-up company partly owned by the university and then to a large company. There is very little innovation at the big drug firms. Instead, their major creative output is trivial variations of top-selling medications that are already on the market (called “me-too drugs”), to cash in with treatments just different enough to justify new patents. 

For example, the first of the statins, drugs that lower cholesterol, was Merck’s Mevacor, which came on the market in 1987. There followed a whole family of me-too statins, including Zocor (also made by Merck), Lipitor, Pravachol and Crestor. There is little reason to believe that one is more effective than another at equivalent doses. 

Moreover, the major drug companies are hardly strapped for money to cover their R&D: A look at their annual reports shows that they spend more on marketing and administration than on R&D. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are consistently among the most profitable companies. 

 Drugmakers are now getting some pushback from the public in response to their claims that they need the money, but they fall back on the rhetoric of the free market. They are investor-owned businesses, after all, they say, and they have a right to charge whatever the market will bear (which for desperately sick patients or their insurers is quite a lot). 

 But the pharmaceutical market is hardly an example of unfettered capitalism, because the companies are totally dependent on government support. In addition to receiving huge tax breaks and government-granted exclusive marketing rights, they are permitted to acquire drugs that resulted from NIH-funded university research. 

For example, Gleevec, a drug to treat a form of leukemia, stemmed mainly from work by an NIH-funded scientist at Oregon Health & Science University; its development was relatively quick. Still, Novartis priced it at about $30,000 a year when it came on the market in 2001. So the public paid twice: once for the research and then an exorbitant amount to buy the drug. Gleevec, meanwhile, now costs triple its initial price. 

About half of the major drug companies are European, including the makers of Avastin and Gleevec. But their research arms are often located in the United States, not only because this is their profit center but also because they want to be near universities that receive generous NIH funding, in order to develop close relationships with the researchers. 

The public should demand something in return for all that governmental support. Other advanced countries regulate drug prices in one way or another: Some cap profits, some cap the rate of price increases, some have formularies that limit drugs in each class to those that are most cost-effective, and some regulate in more than one way. But they all have some form of regulation, and the result is much lower prices for the same drugs. 

In the United States, by contrast, Congress has blocked even Medicare from negotiating the price of drugs or creating a formulary for patients. It’s time that we, too, move to stop price-gouging by the pharmaceutical industry — even when no one notices. (Ver)

(*) Marcia Angell is a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and a former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She wrote this for The Washington Post.

Ver anterior:
Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Martin Shkreli /  Daraprim (Turing) (I)

Ver también:

MARCIA ANGELL: La verdad acerca de la industria farmacéutica. Como nos engañan y que hacer al respecto

Caridad por precios en industria farmacéutica.

Looking for another reason to dislike drug companies? Good news: Some companies systematically use charitable giving as a way to raise their drug prices with minimal public awareness. 

Bloomberg’s Benjamin Elgin and Robert Langreth reported on a number of cases in which drug companies seem to be using charities as a means to milk U.S. taxpayers for all they’re worth. 

Drug companies donate to charities that help patients who are unable to afford the insurance co-payments on expensive drugs. 

The drug companies donate to the co-pay charities so that Americans can afford the out-of-pocket costs of staying on extremely expensive drugs, while the taxpayer-funded Medicare program shoulders the largest part of the total cost.(...) 

 The seven largest co-pay charities in the country received $1.1 billion in total contributions from drug companies in 2014. 

While the law strictly forbids drug companies from giving direct help to Medicare patients, there is no law forbidding them from donating to co-pay charities, which themselves directly help Medicare patients. 

Former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli is reportedly one of many to take advantage of the system. When Turing purchased the drug Daraprim last year, Shkreli immediately raised the drug’s price by more than 5,000 percent. 

Ver:

Precio: El mayor de todos los incrementos...Daraprim (Turing) / Marcia Angell* (II)

Turing then turned around and donated more than a million dollars to co-pay charity Patient Services Inc to ensure that all of its patients would continue to be able to afford their out-of-pocket costs and Turing could gouge Medicare for the majority of the price hike. 

Notable Names 

The authors specifically mentioned the following as companies that have made significant donations to co-pay charities: 

• Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc 
• Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc – Ordinary Shares
• Novartis AG (ADR)
• Mallinckrodt PLC -owned Questcor Pharmaceuticals 

Bloomberg concludes that the current co-pay charity donation system has likely played a large role in the explosion in drug prices in recent years.

Ver también: 

TURING´s Ceo, Martin Shkrli, arrestado / Daraprim...“Schadenfreude*.”

Big Pharma: Los 5 Pecados Capitales / The 5 Deadly Sins

For Mylan, it was a perfect plan, diabolical and unstoppable. The company made changes in its anti-allergy EpiPen dispenser in 2009, enough to give it patent protection. Then in 2012, it began to give away free pens to schools, gradually making school nurses at least partly dependent on them. 

Meanwhile the company was successfully lobbying for the Emergency Epinephrine Act, commonly referred to as the EpiPen Law, which encouraged the presence of epinephrine dispensers in schools. Most recently, after raising the price from $100 to $600, Mylan announced a half-price coupon, making itself appear generous even though the price had effectively jumped from $100 to $300. 

This is capitalism at its worst, a greedy and disdainful profit-over-people system that leaves millions of Americans sick—or dead. 

Here are five sins of the pharmaceutical industry.

• 1. Gouging customers.                                                            The Mylan story is just one of many. An American with cancer will face bills of up to $183,000 per year, even though it hasn't been established that the expensive treatments actually extend lives. A 12-week course of Sovaldi, for hepatitis, costs Gilead Sciences about $84 and is priced at $84,000.
  
  This is an industry that can suddenly impose a 60,000% increase on desperately ill people. Yet the pharmaceutical industry's profit margin is matched only by the unscrupulous financial industry for the highest corporate profit margin. 
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  2. Disposing of people who can't afford medication.                                                                                A Forbes writer summarizes, "Somewhere, right now, a cash-strapped parent or budget-limited patient with a severe allergy will skip acquiring an EpiPen. And someday, they will need it in a life-threatening situation...and they won’t have it. And they will die."
  
  A recent Health Affairs study concluded that since 2004 our medical dollars have been "increasingly concentrated on the wealthy." As a result the richest 1% of American males live nearly 15 years longer than the poorest 1% (10 years for women). The high cost of medication is one of the factors leading to early death. 
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  3. Gouging us a second time.                                                   We're paying twice for outrageously overpriced medications, both directly and with our tax dollars. The average medical insurance deductible has increased 67 percent since 2010, and most Medicare patients still face out-of-pocket costs of $7,000 or more a year.
  
  Over $5 billion of our tax dollars were spent by Medicare and Medicaid in 2014 on just two drugs, Sovaldi and Harvoni. Pharmaceutical lobbyists have rigged the system to prevent Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.
  
  Not satisfied with Medicare-related abuses, Purdue Pharmaceuticals began targeting troubled post-9/11 veterans with expensive and addicting opioid medications. Within 10 years, a third of the Army’s soldiers were hooked on prescription drugs. 
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  4. Stealing our research.                                                           The pharmaceutical industry receives most of its basic research funding from the taxpayers, and 75 percent of the most innovative drugs were initially funded by the National Institutes of Health.
  
  Dean Baker notes that the U.S. is unique in giving drug companies patent monopolies on drugs that are essential for people’s health and lives. An example is genetically engineered insulin, which due to patent protection cannot be made generically, and as a result can cost a patient up to $5,000 a year, many times more than a patent-expired version. Another example is the anti-parasite drug Daraprim, which has been on the market for 62 years, yet was appropriated by the now-infamous Martin Shkreli and price-hiked from $13.50 to $750.
  
  A common excuse for pharmaceutical greed is the cost of research and development. But the industry spends almost $20 on marketing for every dollar spent on R&D. Meanwhile, Big Pharma has cut nearly 150,000 jobs since 2008, mostly in R&D. 
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  5. Cheating on taxes.                                                             Three of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, with over $20 billion in combined profits last year, claimed nearly $9 billion in U.S. losses despite having nearly half their sales in the United States.
  
  Other major drug companies use the notorious inversion procedure to skip out on taxes. AbbVie has done it. Pfizer tried. And Mylan, along with all its other transgressions, ditched the U.S. for the Netherlands, despite having its employees and facilities in West Virginia. Adding a further touch of hypocrisy, Mylan sought U.S. government help when another company tried to buy it out. Patriotism is a beautiful thing to corporations when it protects their profits.(Ver)

Paul Buchheit’s essays, videos and poems can be found at YouDeserveFacts.org.