Geoff Rickly on Surviving Martin Shkreli • Page 2

Shkreli is a funny guy i don't get the hate

 

He quite literally ruined the lives of many people through greed.

 

It's great that we all have a villain to hate but even after Shkreli's ousting from Turing, the price of Daraprim hasn't come down a cent.

Makes you wonder who the real villain in all of this is.

 

because turing still own it. shkreli was the face, the company is still rotten to the core. a guy like shkreli doesn't head a company without surrounding himself with other greedy shitheads.

the real issue, villain, is the fact that companies can do stuff like this completely unregulated because of the market.

 

I understand all of that. That was sort of my point.

 

Ha, true. I don't think he's a bad person though, I've concluded. He has a terrible, arrogant, loudmouth attitude at times; but ultimately has good intentions. He doesn't let people suffer: if someone needs his drugs, he gives it away for free. The only people he charges large amounts of money for Daraprim to are big corporations like Walmart, and that's only so he is able to fund more research into developing new drugs / making Daraprim safer / to help more people. It sounds admirable logically and is better than what most larger American drug companies are doing. It's just a massive shame that his scapegoating in the media has had a huge repercussive effect on small businesses like Collect. He ain't no angel, but he ain't no devil neither.

 

that's crazy that geoff was involved with the hotelier. too bad it didn't work out.

 

Yeah I know, I was trying to flesh it out a little. Thankfully another company sell an off patent tablet at less that $1 a tablet now.

 

Oh ok, I read it as you disagreeing with me. My bad.

 

did he though ? there's been a ton of shit-slinging, but (to my knowledge) no-one has come forward and said that they can't get their meds because of this.

 

he did. yes. 100%. a pill that costs cents to make now costs $750. thankfully other companies have made cheaper alternatives. he is a literal piece of shit sociopath.

 

LOL

im sorry mods, that's literally the only response to that.

 

he's an average chorus poster, that's not an endorsement of taste

 

oh shit. shkreli is aca

 

you didn't answer my question though. who's off their meds because of this ?

 

aca only likes old hotelier tho

 

because it's a fucking dumb question. the simple fact that the pill went from $13.50 to $750 meant it impacted lives. the guy is a textbook sociopath, not a good guy. i mean this isn't even going into the ponzi scheme he ran or the money he stole from his employees but FUCK dude likes brand new and thursday must be a good guy, right?

 

damn. slade?

 

Interesting take on his role in pharmaceuticals and the healthcare business in the United States: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-we-need-martin-shkreli-2015-12

I'm not saying what he did was right, but there are many more factors at play here than simple "Drug to treat the symptoms of AIDS and other immune disorders is price hiked 5000%, the person who did it surely must be evil."

The system of drug pricing in the United States is fundamentally flawed, with prices fluctuating wildly depending on the owner of the IP, the healthcare status of the clients, what pills are covered by which healthcare companies, etc. It's not nearly so cut and dry is all I'm trying to say.

 

you said it yourself - other companies have started making cheaper alternatives. No one is going to die because of him or his company.

I don't care about his music taste. He simply had every right to do what he did. That's capitalism for ya

 

And, him being a "good guy" or having a good taste in music is completely irrelevant by the way.

It's possible that he knew there was this generic brand of Daraprim coming and to continue to turn a profit on the increasingly smaller number of people buying Daraprim, he had to price gouge. People with no health care or a health care coverage that wouldn't include Daramprim would buy the generic brand which as noted earlier in this thread was less than 1 dollar per pill, while the people whose healthcare coverage includes Daraprim pay substantially less than the 750 per pill, a tab which their healthcare company pays Turing pharamceuticals, assuring they get paid for people using their pills.


I'm not entirely certain this happened in this case, but it's possible. From an optics standpoint, sure the headline "Pharmaceutical Exec Raises AIDS Drug 5000%, States He "Needs To Make A Profit off This Pill" looks bad, but it doesn't tell potentially the whole story.

 

Both of you should read that last comment I made.

Also, not to defend the guy, since the SEC investigation is still ongoing and he still hasn't been proven innocent or guilty. But there seem to be no victims of his alleged scheme who have come forward to corroborate the allegations made against him, and it's still very possible he's found not guilty in that case

 

This is a far more complicated issue then we treat it. It's not black and white.

These drugs don't fall from the sky. They require millions upon millions of dollars in R&D including state of the art equipment and the top minds in chemistry and biology. It is unbelievably expensive to create these drugs. Making the actual pill may cost a fraction of a cent, but willing that pill into existence takes a miracle of modern science.

I don't know the economics that caused a pill that cost $13.50 to rise to $750. But let's not over-simplify it.

 

I have a huge problem with that article and I have since it was written. Shkreli is not a necessary evil, he was exploiting loopholes to make his $55 million dollar investment profitable. Sure, the publicity will have opened up some eyes to the problems with the pharmaceutical market in America, a byproduct of rampant capitalism. But it does not make what he did any better. A shit move, with some good consequences is still at heart a shit move.

Turing upping the price will not and has not shifted the landscape of Pharma in the US. It has just made them that bit more profitable. We don't need Martin Shkreli, we don't need anybody price gouging. Shkreli took advantage of the system in place to "make a billion". He is still a bad guy whether John Doe now knows a little bit more about US Pharma now or not.

That drug is sold in India for $0.04c. It was already being price gouged in the US.

The drug was 62 years old. There was no R&D costs for Turing, they bought the patent of a widely available cheaply made drug for $55 million and upped the cost to make their money back. Shkreli said it himself he did it to make money.

 

Did you read the second comment I made? There are more factors at play than simply him raising the price of the pill. You're looking at this from one end of the binary, and I'm just trying to display to you that there is more to this argument than what you are seeing.