Turing chief executive Martin Shkreli (shown here) has become an overnight villain after public interest organizations raised alarm over his company buying a long-used medicine, Daraprim, in the treatment of AIDS and immediately raised the price of $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. When a reporter asked him to explain the increase for a drug that has been on the market for 62 years, Shkreli called him a “moron” and refused to answer the question. The company has now become a target in the presidential election as an example of how companies are still profiteering on these drugs.
Daraprim is used to address a food-borne illness called toxoplasmosis caused by a parasite that can severely affect those with compromised immune systems. Turing purchased the rights to the drug last month and hit AIDS patients with the immediate massive increase.
Judith Aberg, a spokesperson for the HIV Medicine Association, says that even with insurance, the increase would mean that patients could be forced to pay $150 per pill out of pocket.
Alberg’s group and the Infectious Diseases Society of America wrote in a joint letter to Turing declaring the price increase to be “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.”
Turing spokesman Craig Rothenberg has said the company will use the money to fun more research and marketing and education tools to raise awareness of the disease.
With a price increase of at least 4,100 percent, John Carroll, the editor of Fierce Biotech, asked Turing chief executive Martin Shkreli directly to explain the increase and Shkreli refused to explain and instead insulted him personally as “irrelevant” and someone who doesn’t “think logically. He also sent a helpful tweet that said “You are such a moron.”
After all, Turing’s webpage explains that “We are dedicated to helping patients” . . . at $750 pill.
Professor Ninian Peckitt,
I don’t think we are communicating. I am attempting to state the constitutional position. The American thesis and founding documents were nullified and superseded perhaps all the way back to Marbury v. Madison but certainly by the time of Lincoln’s “Reign of Terror.”
I stated what was written and intended by the Founders, if you read their relevant writings and the founding documents.
To be sure,
the American Founders DID NOT establish “Capitalism,”
that was Karl Marx.
The Founders provided for freedom, free enterprise without governmental interference and the “pursuit of happiness.”
The American Founders provided no mandate or lexicon to exert control over the free enterprise of free Americans. No “capitalism,” “economy,” “stimulus,” “QE3,4,5,6,” “recession,” “depression,” “M-1, M-3,” “velocity of money,” etc. Market analysts may use P/E, EPS, Payout Ratios and ROE but they don’t need terms to implement control over specific business activity.
They SEVERELY limited government in every written text including the clear delineation of Justice, Tranquility, Common Defence, Promote General Welfare in the Preamble, that collectivists preposterously reject as not binding.
They secured the “blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,…”
The American Founders began this grand experiment as a restricted-vote republic. God knows how that morphed into communism.
It’s really revealing when liberals observe the practice of the Founders In 1789 and turn right around and claim that the Founders intended a collectivist welfare state, which eliminates freedom and imposes the chains of Marxist slavery as Central Planning, Control of the Means of Production, Social Engineering and Redistribution of Wealth.
Not one of those principles can be cited directly in the founding documents. They must be “interpreted” into them. Not one of the principles of communism will ever be found in a study of life and practice in the U.S. in 1789.
The Church of England was established by a tyrant named King Henry the VIII, who is a heresyarch in the Catholic Church. Anglicans have no valid orders and have lost apostolic succession centuries ago. Pope Leo the XIII declared Anglican orders null and void in 1896. Anglicanism has lost it’s way…many centuries ago and was always heretical
If drugs are overpriced in a market economy, the company responsible will eventually go out of business….. one way or another. Consumers have great power and Government will step in given half a chance.
Forgotwhoiam
Economies have been in place for thousands of years and America is a newcomer to the scene – and in this short time has been responsible for several episodes of global chaos. In 1929 our first taste of American economic skill resulted in the Wall Street Crash and directly led to economic crisis in Germany calling in of loans, rise of Hitler and ultimately WW2.
Then we had Black Monday in 1987 followed by the Global collapse of the Mortgage and Banking Systems of 2007 when billions suffered the indignity of the failure of the Global Financial System precipitated by US fiscal conduct. All this was because of failure of the US “System” of the unacceptable face of capitalism and frank corruption.
So don’t whine to me about the Greatness of the American System.
It Stinks.
The USA has caused a terrible mess and this is a direct result of the parable I have posted on US capitalism. Its perversity and frank corruption has destroyed the economic system on which we all rely.
This is the Success of America and the example it has set the world.
And a New crash is just around the corner.
It is clear you have absolutely no concept of the global damage America has created. The only consolation is that your “Stuff You I’m all right Jack” attitude will soon have to pay the ultimate price for this economic arrogance and your faction will start to sing a different tune. I am absolutely certain that this will not be in the same key.
The Western democracies are now effectively bankrupt. There is no way on earth these loans will be honoured and to pretend that they will be honoured is just plain deception.
But that’s what created the problem in the first place…..
Professor Ninian Peckitt,
AS
“…benign influence of a responsible government.”
WE
“…establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty
AFTER THAT WE
“…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Now can you see the “package,” you Nutty Professor?
Government was limited to security and infrastructure
(only promoting general welfare, not funding individual welfare)
providing the essential American CONTEXT,
the parameters within which the Constitution provided for governance.
Professor Ninian Peckitt,
“What is the message?
Capitalism is a great system that benefits all…until…it is controlled by the American System.”
—–
THE MESSAGE IS THAT ONLY “FREE ENTERPRISE,” WITHOUT INTERFERENCE BY GOVERNMENT,
AS “THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS,” IS PROVIDED FOR AND SECURED AS “THE BLESSINGS OF
LIBERTY…” BY THE FOUNDING DOCUMENTS.
The principles of the Communist Manifesto are precluded by limited government, freedom and private property rights established and provided for in the founding documents.
To wit:
No Central Planning
No Control of the Means of Production
No Social Engineering
No Redistribution of Wealth
Please present where the founding documents establish, provide for or otherwise mandate any of these principles of communism/collectivism/socialism/progressivism.
Please present where those principles were practiced by the Founders who wrote the founding documents in 1789.
It is criminal for the judicial branch to “interpret” on behalf and for the sole benefit of communists, collectivists, progressives, socialists, liberals and various and sundry other types of one man, one vote “democrats.”
———-
And now, a word from the Founding Fathers:
“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate …. But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government.”
– James Madison
“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.” – Thomas Jefferson
———-
“The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate …. But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government.”
– James Madison
———-
Let’s see, “…left most free to individual enterprise” and “…the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government.”
I LIKE IT!
The American Founders sans “interpretation.”
Let’s compare that to Karl Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Nope. Those don’t sound much alike to me at all.
Only in America. It kind of makes ya want ta go out and bilk some old retired person out of their life savings.
Free markets! Finally… a supply/demand case to be studied endlessly in MBA programs.
phillyT
“As always, conservatives like to pass of their failures on the poor and middle class and keep the goodies for themselves.”
The so-called liberals on here do that as well, with alleged grace.
Jack
Striving for truth in description and not glory for particular persons. Great stuff. Honesty is refreshing.
We do not enjoy true capitalism with the “people” deciding on a product or service (sometimes, but not at the level of real control). The tenets of economics are postulates in any case, not proven to be true. There is not a level playing field, and that’s fine except that “capitalists” want everyone with disadvantages to bootstrap it. This is a ruse! Big news flash: 1. People do not have equal abilities and resources. 2. Sociopaths like this guy do best in our “system,” but we are not all sociopaths.
We are run by cabals, monopolies, “too big to fail” enterprises, government policies and appointees, and local governments and regulations. You don’t start making big money until you stop dealing in actual things and more in conceptual and manipulated reality (hedge funds, etc., with behind the scenes cooperation by the top players: lying liars.) This guy obviously looks at the life-saving drug as a money-making product, not a real thing that affects real people.
Just try to open a business in your home town starting with little money and no particular contacts. Amazon sells it cheaper and/or rules and regs are often prohibitively costly (while those at the top pay no taxes, are coddled in their enterprises, and slapped on the wrist for taking out big swaths of the planet).
Look at the interest rates poor people pay, no giant loans at 0% for them.
If you have a really good technological or organic or inventive enterprise, the big companies need to buy you out to maintain their hegemony.
I don’t see anything so wonderful here that merits worship and pride.