| > Listen to the man speak for 5 minutes, instead of listening to the media's portrayal of him, and you'll learn he's an intelligent guy doing no harm. From what I've seen of him on Twitter he's a complete asshole in addition to being kind of a creep (he's currently banned after repeatedly harassing Lauren Duca). That's enough for me to not like him regardless of his company's price gouging. > The only reason Shkreli's company even acquired the rights to Daraprim is because other companies couldn't make enough money on it to want to keep making it. I think you should read the Wikipedia article [1] (and it's may sources). But quotes like this don't lead me to believe that Turing acquired Daraprim to "make it better": > Presentations from Retrophin, a company formerly headed by Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing, from which Turing acquired the rights to Daraprim, suggest that a closed distribution system could prevent generic competitors from legally obtaining the drugs for the bioequivalence studies required for FDA approval of a generic drug. > In India, over a dozen pharmaceutical companies manufacture and sell pyrimethamine tablets, and multiple combinations of generic pyrimethamine are available for a price ranging from US$0.04 to US$0.10 each (3–7 rupees). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrimethamine |
Regarding pharma he's far from the only person to increase pricing, merely the most popular (and easiest target) among a long list of companies who have jacked up prices in the past few decades. This is a uniquely American phenomenon and pharma is basically the only industry where a company can increase prices 200-500% and not get destroyed by competition (even well after patents expire).
> The “most important factor” that drives prescription drug prices higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world is the existence of government-protected “monopoly” rights for drug manufacturers, researchers at Harvard Medical School report today.
http://khn.org/news/government-protected-monopolies-drive-dr...
In addition to the extensive backlog at the FDA crippling competition, the various monopoly positions are heavily exploited by "pharmacy benefit managers":
> Americans pay the highest health-care prices in the world, including the highest for drugs, medical devices, and other health-care services and products. Our fragmented system produces many opportunities for excessive charges. But one lesser-known reason for those high prices is the stranglehold that a few giant intermediaries have secured over distribution.
> In the case of PBMs, their desire for larger patient networks created incentives for their own consolidation, promoting their market dominance as a means to attract customers. Today’s “big three” PBMs—Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and OptumRx, a division of large insurer UnitedHealth Group—control between 75 percent and 80 percent of the market, which translates into 180 million prescription drug customers.
http://prospect.org/article/hidden-monopolies-raise-drug-pri...
Notably the power of PBM's monopoly is driven from the fact they control all the lucrative pharma purchasing for "unions, state and federal employee plans, even Medicare and Medicaid" as well as the insurance companies.