[BoorishBears]

To me it seems like a tragedy of the commons, the issue is who will be first to stop extracting value this way. Since no one can be expected to, we need to fix the system that allows it, rather than expecting some altruistic behavior from outfits built to generate profit

[inopinatus]

There is no tragedy of the commons here. This is not a shared resource being depleted. The proper descriptor here is rent-seeking[1] and the Turing/Daraprim case lines up with Shiller's "river chain" analogy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

[BoorishBears]

Again, this isn't anywhere near my wheelhouse, but I think of money the insurance companies allocate from premiums for drugs as being a shared resource that's being depleted. When the margins that insurance companies have set as targets are brushed up upon, premiums go up and we repeat the process again, except the premiums can't go up forever (right? I wonder if an expert on the subject could confirm) and the system will collapse

[inopinatus]

What you've described is definitely not a commons but a simple pricing outcome for a financial product. In a competitive market you'd expect that price to find an equilibrium, not to rise without bound.

Notwithstanding which, this case exhibits none of those characteristics. It is rent-seeking, pure and simple.

[pyre]

At the same time, his justifications for how this "only hurts the insurers," and not the end-users aren't exactly right either.