Posted on 09/23/2015 4:28:49 AM PDT by expat_panama
I, for one , value his opinions.
“I, for one , value his opinions.”
Anyone that denounces his country like an illegal alien leaving Mexico is not my countryman. They have no say anymore. Anyone that does such a thing is someone with bad decision making skills and I don’t listen to losers.
I have never seen his denunciation of this country. Have you?
Ok, I get that but still they are playing with other people's money, yes?
Seems to me these managing consultants should charge a fee for their services - as many do, right? - and beyond that let them invest their own money in their fund if they wish to profit from it.
As it is, it is a win-win-win situation.
Fee for service - win
Fund performs well, profit is taken - win
Fund loses value, manager loses no capital - win
“ex-pat”
That is denunciation and he lives in Panama. He is a foreigner now and I am tired of foreigner’s trying to tell Americans how to live. and what to do.
He ran away. He doesn’t get to come back and tell us how to live our lives.
Regardless of what he doesn't know about them, I suspect he still knows far more than Kevin D. Williamson does.
Except that the drug in question is a "specialty drug," meaning that it is used for rare conditions, so the market is very small. Heck, the drug is well past its patent, and no generic makers have stepped in because it is a low volume (and until recently, low cost) drug. (And, Now that the price has been increased, distribution channels have been tightened, to make it difficult for generic makers to obtain samples.). So, the market incentives to create a newer, low-cost replacement aren't there. Who would invest the millions needed to develop a replacement, when the market is so small and the investment could be wiped out if the drug maker simply decides to return to the original price?
This guy (and others who have taken similar action see: other formerly low-cost specialty drugs) has found a perfect storm of sorts. A highly I elastic product, with essentially 100% market share, and with limited incentives for anyone to step in and compete. It's essentially monopolistic behavior.
Capital gains should NOT be taxed. EVER! Period!
I’m sick of class warfare BS.
More fun!! (FED damned if they do and damned if they don’t)
What Happens If Rates Stay Too Low for Too Long?
http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy-policy/2015/09/22/what-happens-if-rates-stay-too-low-for-too-long/?intcmp=bigtopmarketfeatures
Is it time to invest in wheelbarrows?
A biotech company founded by a former hedge fund manager recently purchased the rights to a critical antiparasitic drug and jacked up the price by more than 5,000%.
Startup Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired Daraprim, a drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, in August. Toxoplasmosis is a disease caused by a common parasite that can be deadly, especially for those who are immunosuppressed.
Turing immediately increased the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill, The New York Times reported.
In an interview Monday with Bloomberg TV’s Betty Liu, the company’s CEO, Martin Shkreli, defended the move, explaining that they “need to turn a profit on the drug.”
Daraprim, which has been around for 62 years, has had multiple owners. Shkreli said that other companies were “giving it away almost.” He added that even at $750 per tablet, it’s “still underpriced relative to its peers.”
It costs little to make Daraprim, but Shkreli said there are other costs such as distribution costs that have increased over the years.
He said that they plan to use the money they make from Daraprim for alternative research to make “a better version” of the drug.
In the meantime, he said if someone can’t afford the drug, they will “give it away totally for free.”
Shkreli, 31, previously served as CEO of publicly-traded biotech company Retrophin. Last year, the board fired him because of stock irregularities, Bloomberg reported. Retrophin recently filed a lawsuit seeking $65 million in damages, alleging that he used the company to pay off claims of investors from his hedge fund. Shkreli told Forbes the company’s claims are “preposterous.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/turing-increases-price-of-darapim-2015-9
That’s baloney. These drugs are only sold at steep discounts in foreign countries because these countries have government-controlled health care systems with strict price controls on their drugs. The drug companies can only afford to do business there because they sell so much of their product here in the U.S. with no price controls. If a company sells drugs overseas at subsidized prices and then has to allow them to be imported here into the U.S., then they won’t be selling them anymore at ANY price.
How exactly did you lose money to hedge fund managers?
The tax treatment of no qualified stock options might be a good way to look at this. I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that stock options are taxed as income up front and capital gains later if there is a profit on the sale.
That’s exactly the point. If the market is small, then the cost of bringing a drug through the approval process is enormous when measured on a unit basis. What drug company in their right mind would ever bring a drug to market for 10,000 potential customers if they couldn’t price the drug accordingly?
But this drug wasn’t brought to market by the guy who just jacked up the price. It has been on the market for 60+ years. The hedge fund guy understood the inelasticity and lack of competitors, and exploited the situation to increase his profits.
economically speaking, what he did is essentially indistinguishable from monopolistic behavior.
If the pharmaceutical companies could not rely on American insurers and (especially) Medicare as their "sugar tit", they would have to raise prices to those overseas healthcare systems.
USA and overseas drug prices would eventually equalize. Which is 100% ok with me.
Your statement about this product being on the market for 60+ years demonstrates why all the controversy in this case is pointless. This isn't a proprietary product. There is no patent protection, and there hasn't been any such protection for years. The producer of this drug doesn't engage in any practices where they force anyone to use this product. Therefore, there is no monopoly at all. Anyone -- including the 10,000 people who actually use this drug -- can produce an alternative drug using the exact same formula and production processes. Why don't they?
No, I don't.
Throw 'em all in jail, and then round up anyone who's ever met a hedge fund manager and send them off to the Gulag. Then we can go for the-- Well, anything that comes from the NYT has to be true, especially when it's anti-capitalist.
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