Why I Don’t Necessarily Hate Shkreli

The skinny on Martin Shkreli, the acquirer of Turing Pharmaceuticals.

Raise a couple of hundred million.
Buy orphan drug. (Drugs with less than 3000 patients)
Insurance companies +FDA won’t pay for or certify the viability of cheaper foreign generics/biosimilars.
Make Insurance companies foot the bill.
If the patient doesn’t have insurance, give it away for free or mostly nothing.

By law, the federal government cannot negotiate prices with drug companies. I think, this is something that has to be modified to some extent. This is the elephant in the room.

At the time of Shkreli’s major announcement and well prior to it, it seems that patients could buy Daraprim online from Canada at $2.50/pill.