By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Following his arrest this week for alleged securities fraud, Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli resigned his office.
Turing garnered infamy for the 5000 percent price increase of Daraprim, a $13.50 medication indicated for patients requiring treatment of Toxoplasma gondii–an opportunistic pathogen afflicting the immune-compromised such as AIDS patients. Monthly treatment cost now associated with the drug can be upwards of seventy-five thousand dollars. See previous articles HERE and HERE.
Interim CEO Ron Tiles thanked the 32-year-old for “helping us build Turing Pharmaceuticals into the dynamic research-focused company it is today.”
Turing Pharmaceuticals issued a press release which reads in part:
Zug, Switzerland, December 18, 2015 — Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, a privately-held biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing innovative treatments for serious diseases and conditions, today announced the resignation of Martin Shkreli from the position of Chief Executive Officer and the appointment of Ron Tilles to the position of Interim Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Tilles will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors. He said, “We wish to thank Martin for helping us build Turing Pharmaceuticals into the dynamic research focused company it is today, and wish him the best in his future endeavors. At the same time, I am very excited about the opportunity to guide Turing Pharmaceuticals forward. We remain committed to ensuring that all patients have ready and affordable access to Daraprim and Vecamyl. Research Development on new medications continues to be a priority for the company. With the dynamic leadership of Eliseo Salinas as head of Research and Development and Nancy Retzlaff as head of Commercial Operations, Turing Pharmaceuticals is poised for great success in the coming years.”
I find it interesting that this press release mentioned Daraprim and how it is coupled with all patients having affordable access. It seems rather certain that Turing is responding to the pariah reputation it has earned as a result of the price increases but hedged its bets by focusing on patients and not insurance providers and institutions, which have been under Shkreli made a target of high pricing. It will certainly remain to be seen what happens in practice, especially in light of the cash cow it now can still milk.
Turing will have a serious PR problem to contend with despite the resignation of its flamboyant and extravagant CEO. It could establish some goodwill with some reasonableness.
Depending on single streams of revenue can be problematic, especially when science discovers alternate drug treatment regimes and large insurers update their formularies. There are many forms of justice, my friends.
By Darren Smith
Source:
Deutsche Welle
Turing Pharmaceuticals, Press Release
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
L’Observer…..I’m not sure if the British actually have death panels. I think an individual MD may just decide to to withhold treatment.
The British did in fact stop treatment of 60,000 patients without giving them possible treatment options.
I guess culturally, we are SO much different than the British that that could NEVER happen here.
I have previously noted that some who scoff at “death panels” will, in the next breath, voice an opinion about who should be treated and when to stop treatment or “pull the plug”. They are unwittenly setting themselves up as their own death panel……..making recommentations that are compulsory, overriding the wishes of patient and family.
Aridog ……….my response to your post about your friend is about 8 comments up from this comment.
bigfatmike … err, no. At least not for more than one night 😀 But I know your comment was tongue in cheek. The “medical care” is a bit more serious than that 🙁 …dang it! 😀 I’m still amused that the advertisements toss it off like you might get a case of the sniffles or something. Er, not exactly….
A few years ago one of my best friends, from childhood no less, was dying after 14 years of a cancer battle. In the last week, when he lost all dexterity (couldn’t even hold a coffee cup) he said “enough!” He thereafter refuse to medicate or eat the fluid mush he was provided…it took him a week to die. Both I and his wife understood, but it was still very unpleasant to watch it go down. We got a lot of flak about shirking responsibility. For what? Prolonging a natural event? Let me go more peacefully that that….Dave was a tough strong man, nobody to fool with in his prime, but at the end he knew when enough was enough and made his peace with it. It seemed like an appropriate time for euthanasia but the problem with that is who controls the process? I’m left with what Dave did, which let him control his own end. I am not sure at all I could have made that final injection in to Dave to end his suffering….so who am I to lecture others on the topic? I just miss him dearly…period.
” “erection lasting over 4 hours, seek medical care!””
What a disappointment. I thought you get bragging rights and drinks all around in any bar in the country.
L’Observer, don’t sweat it. Some board “contributors” here think Joe McCarthy was a hero, and are happy to see that the Republicans welcomed back in the KKK, Birchers, ANPs, and evangelical radicals that Buckley ran off back in the 60’s. Hate and scorn is all they have left because they ran out of ideas decades ago.
L’Observer at December 19, 2015 at 6:44 pm
On the other hand, betcha there are hundreds of thousands of the dying elderly here that would welcome a death panel but doctors and hospitals prefer to crack ribs, insert a vent and stomach tube, and perform another invasive therapy before letting a poor old sick person die in peace.
I am inclined to agree here…I know that one day I will face that end (I’m kinda old even now 🙂 ) and I’d hope it is peaceful, quiet, and in my sleep. Yet, I am leery of letting bureaucratic medical pros decide what’s worth saving and what isn’t….common sense should dictate that, but “statistics” can intervene in the bureaucrats mind and that can be more lethal that the disease or infirmity….and certainly more painful. BTW…I am on my 3rd go round with cancer, first 2 totally eradicated…this time, who knows (just yet)…I just refuse to give up and I participate in my own treatment with Chemo. When and if the final day arrives, please let me go in peace. I’ll not go willingly, but please if I must, let it peaceful.
Can we discuss how to manage that phenomena? Who controls the “deciders” or at least manages them? Anyone? Or just dumb luck?
There are a lot of reasons the US tops the list of healthcare costs. We consume more drugs, legal and illegal than other countries, and we pay more for them than anyone else. The same applies to lab tests and diagnostic procedures–we use more and get charged more than elsewhere. Surgical procedures are the most expensive in the world in the US, and our outcomes are no better (hence the booking medical tourism industry), and we consume more of that as well. Hospital charges and physician charges are some of the highest, though it varies by country, and we don’t have the best outcomes.
There is an epidemic of unnecessary surgeries in the US, something that gets a more watchful eye in other countries. Famously when a study came out in the 1990’s on unnecessary spine surgeries, the American College of Surgeons lobbied, successfully, to have the group defunded.
So it’s more than just physician pay, it’s everything. More drugs, more tests, more surgeries, more procedures, and higher prices on everything.
Dieter Heymann … at December 19, 2015 at 6:16 pm
The ends of TV advertisements of drugs are a riot when we learn all the terrible things that can happen to us when we use this medication…
Man oh man was I waiting for this comment! My favorite is the usual one about Cialis or Viagra where they say if you have an “erection lasting over 4 hours, seek medical care!” But they never ever tell you what that “medical care” entails 🙂 I looked some of it up….gaaaaahh! Try looking it up, you won’t like it…I promise, for the most common remedy. 😀
Some of the others are also egregious…like the warnings about TB et al., without any detail. TB you say…hell I had to pass a full TB test just to come home after 3 odd years in Asia (exposure anti-bodies in my tests I assume)…and I always flunked the “Tine Test (sic?)” until recently….so had to get the whole swab smear etc. Every-time. And I didn’t object, then or now, as it was for my benefit and those around me.
I’m only amused by what the advertisements leave out. The gritty stuff … .:-)
PS: Whot…you don’t like the idea of packing your “Johnson” in ice and sticking a needle it, or worse, a knife, in it? Gives “sex” a whole nuther dimension, eh?
Bigfatmike…….leaving aside the obvious cost advantages of killing off some of the most expensive patients to treat ( see “60,000 patients put on quiet pathway to death”) about 40% of total U.S. health care spending goes toward physicians’ bills (the last time I checked a few years ago…..I doubt that it’s changed much).
The average primary care MD in the U.S. made $186,000 in America vs. $131,000 in Germany. I’ll check more sources…..there are numerous articles about the income differences between the U.S.and their single payer counterparts.
The specialists gap in pay is generally greater. I don’t want to leave this page and go back to my source, but I think ” It’s the physician pay, stupid is from the 8-21-2009 Forbes issue. There are also examples give of the charges for a procedure like a hip replacement, which i assume are just the surgeons’ fees.
A 2006? Der Spiegel article covers German physicians “fleeing to” the U.S. because of higher pay here.
I’ll go back and get more comparisons with the U.K., Canada_ etc.
” about 40% of total U.S. health care spending goes toward physicians’ bills (the last time I checked a few years ago…..I doubt that it’s changed much).
The average primary care MD in the U.S. made $186,000 in America vs. $131,000 in Germany.”
Thanks for the interesting numbers. Talking in big round numbers, 40% of the roughly $9000 that we spend would suggest that $3,600 is applied to wage costs. Using the US/German comparison (186/131 = 1.42 >> 70%) as a guess, we see that US labor costs might be reduced to as little as $2500 for a saving of $1100 – not chump change, but not all that much either.
So based on putting US Health Care salaries in line with European counterparts we might see annual US spending of $7900 in current dollars vs $3700 for Europe. That still leaves a lot of dollars to squeeze.
It would be interesting to see a distribution of the $9,000 into its components: salaries, drugs, services, medical devices etc.
I am intentionally staying away from you “60,000 death path story” because from my brief glance at a story it seems to me the key issue is informed consent. The pictures and stat I saw (patients succumbing in 29 hours) suggest to me that the patents were reasonably candidates for DNR. If that is true then transparency and informed consent are the issues – which is something many of us advocate for in all aspects of life and governance. I don’t see that confirming or refuting issues of informed consent in a different country would be very illuminating for our own situation – because that is always a concern when citizens deal with government or large corporations that exercise power in their lives.
In contrast to that, I do believe there are useful lessons to be learned regarding cost control, breaking the decades long increase in health care costs, and efficient distribution of health care.
Commie dog? Commie dog?
Someone has been re-reading his 1950 propaganda from the Birch society.
Aridog……..I’ve had an advanced medical directive for over 30 years. While it can’t cover every contingency, it gives caregivers and relatives a good general idea of what one wants, if the patient isn’t able to make that decision.
Mine states that all attempts to revive me are to cease 6 months after I’m pronounced dead.😉
“Unless the medical establishment agrees to/is forced to take a 40-50% reduction in income, America can not hope to match the cost advantages of those systems.”
That could only be true if most of the difference in cost is made up by wage differences. I would like to see the numbers that show that salary accounts for much of the difference between the $9,000 per year per person that we pay and the less than $3,400 they pay in Great Britain, or the $6300 they pay in Switzerland or the $3,700 that is the average for the OECD.
Actually if the difference is mostly salary the solution is much simpler than we have any right to expect. It is not hard to find analysis demonstrating that the medical profession is protected by education, licensing, and immigration standards.
Mose everyone in the lower 80 percentile SES has to compete globally. Since the 1970’s working people have seen little or not increase in their real income/ standard of living. Some SES groups have actually seen declines in real income.
I hate to see anyone experience a decline in their standard of living. But also do not see any reason why any particular group should be protected from competition – especially when that protection does not benefit and is not available to the rest of us.
If salary for medical professionals is the big difference in health care costs, then obviously the solution is to open up the medical professions to the same competitive forces that hold down the wage increased of working people. Make it easy for foreign medical schools to train to our standards. Make it easy for medical professionals to immigrate to the US.
If salary differences really do make up the bulk of the difference in health care costs then a few years, a decade or two of competition will easily solve the problem.
But I will bet you it is more complicated than that. And I will bet you that getting other costs like hidden cost from monopoly power and advertising out of the equation will make big contributions as well.
big fat mike…….here are a couple of estimates of U.S. health care administrative costs. ( Total U.S. health care spending us c.$3 Trillion annually).
The New England Journal of Medicine put administrative costs at $361 Billion for 2012. Since the total was less than the current $3Trillion, that $361Billion would be c.14% of total 2012 health care spending.
The Commonwealth Fund puts U.S. Hospital administrative expenses at c.25%. That is twice as much as the two countries with the lowest ad. costs, Canada and Scotland ( the entire UK’s were not given). The Netherlands ad the highest ad. costs in Europe, at 20%.
At $1 Trillion+ annually for the hospital expenditures in the US., the Commonwealth fund estimates savings of up to $150 Billion annually if the U.S could get its ad. costs down to the levels of Canada and Scotland.
IF 2014 hospital ad. costs were c.$300 Billion, and TOTAL U.S. ad costs were $361B in 2012, then let’s estimate c.$400 B total ad. costs for 2014. If c. $150 B could be squeezed out of hospital ad. costs, and an additional 50% ad. cost reduction could be wrung out of the non- hospital ad.costs for a $70B reduction, then there is potentially $220B annually in ad. cost savings.
That could reduce health care expenditures by c. 7%. Anyway I’ve ever tried to crunch these numbers, I can never get anywhere near to the c. 50% lower average per capita costs of other industrialized nations.
Ahhhh. The old “death panel” argument.
Stupidity never dies, does it.
On the other hand, betcha there are hundreds of thousands of the dying elderly here that would welcome a death panel but doctors and hospitals prefer to crack ribs, insert a vent and stomach tube, and perform another invasive therapy before letting a poor old sick person die in peace.
As the government administered programs have increasingly taken a bigger share of total health care spending, we should have already seen administrative costs savings from the c. 50% government programs.
But we haven’t. In view of that, I can’t see where 100% gvt. Controlled health care system will do much to lower administrative costs.
We pay more for virtually every health care item/service in the U.S., but this is due to health care providers charging/earning much more than in almost all other countries.
Those higher costs are “entrenched” in our system. Any serious effort to reduce health care costs means forcing providers to accept far less compensation. We can’t get there by just a modest reduction in admin. costs.
Karen, The commie dog here claims he ran a business. If he did he ran it into the ground. I’ve never believed his tales of having a biz. He sure as hell doesn’t understand Greece or lazy Greeks. I know many Greeks who left their homeland years ago to come to the greatest country, USA. They LOVE the US and are ashamed of their homeland. They saw the lazy ones being pandered to by socialist politicians and knew decades back the takers would ruin that once great country. The Greeks who came here are some of the hardest working people I know. My sister worked for 2 Greek brothers @ a diner in New Haven. It was open 24/7 EVERY day of the year. Each brother worked a 12 hour shift, EVERY day.
The losers and takers stayed in Greece. On one Greek Island, almost 14% of the people are allegedly blind and totally disabled. Most of them drive!! Under Obama, disability in this country has skyrocketed. I think the commie dog is a taker. He sure doesn’t talk like a businessman. He says he has been a teacher, I can believe that.
PhillyT……the gap in GPs income (compared to other industrialized single payer countries) is less than the gap in specialists’ pay.
In that area, I think that U.S. MDs overall would have to take a 35-40% cut in income to put their incomes,on a par with their conterparts.
I don’t know how hospital costs compare across countries. U.S. hospitals may have to take a similar % cut to get in line with the other countries.
I think a LOT more is spent on CAT scans, MRIs, etc. In the U.S. than in other countries. We have more per capita, and costs per use is higher.
This may have stopped, but I know that MDs and physician groups owned these machines. That creates an inherent conflict of interest.
I recently saw a list of compensation given to MDs by drug companies. A relatively few physicians made astronomical “fees” from the drug makers for “consulting”.
Since the drug companies know which doc tors are prescribing their drugs, those “consulting fees” are likely to drop if prescriptions for certain drugs aren’t written.
The ends of TV advertisements of drugs are a riot when we learn all the terrible things that can happen to us when we use this medication. The summit of the riot is when we are advised “when such and such happens immediately call your doctor”. I do not have a direct phone connection with my doctor and I bet that I am not the only one. The correct advise is: “go immediately to an emergency clinic”.
Big fat Mike…..I had given some figures months ago re possible savings on administration costs with a single payer system. I’ll try to tretrieve those numbers and provide them.
The point I had made previously is that most countries with single payer systems pay substantially less than what MDs make in the U.S. Unless the medical establishment agrees to/is forced to take a 40-50% reduction in income, America can not hope to match the cost advantages of those systems.
Also, putting 60,000 patients on a “quiet pathway to death” ,as was done in the U.K., is definitely a money saver, but keeping patients in the dark about possible treatment options raises some serious ethical questions.
PhillyT ………..United Healthcare anticipated losing $500,000,000 in 2016 in the Obamacare exchanges. The figures you provided appear to be the total aggregate numbers for all of the company’s results, not results from the exchanges.
Karen, you’re right, I had forgotten about all those other fixed and variable costs that big pharmaceuticals have to contend with, such as paying bribes to doctors, hospitals, government officials, and others, paying an army of tax attorneys and accountants to evade taxes, paying hundreds of millions of dollars for executives so that they con continue to live in the lush robber baron lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to, and so forth. When you factor all that in, the fleecing of the public is, indeed, fully justified.
Greece was caught lying about its finances in order to fraudulently get into the EU, and then they though it was unfair for Europe to demand it keep the promises it made to lower its debt. GS was not the only villain in this scenario.
Poor Greece.
Nick – where can I get one of these free money trees that the Left appears to believe in so faithfully? “A miracle will happen” and everything will be paid for at no personal cost to us.
Oh, and don’t forget Cyprus, where they confiscated personal savings accounts and drained them. Opa!
This kind of behavior by the Left reminds me of the phenomenon in CA about which I’ve written before. A hard left leaning state, we routinely vote for higher taxes, more regulations, higher minimum wage. If it’s labeled “for the poor”, or “for the environment”, we vote for it, regardless of the outcome of similar voting decisions. But when it comes time for Californians to pay for something themselves, they go with the lowest bidder – the illegal alien crews that do not follow any of those practices they just voted into being. They don’t pay minimum wage, work comp, follow regulations or permits or environmental codes. But they offer the lowest price. They buy cheap made in China products over more expensive American made.
I’ve seen this many times. Voters are so eager for other people to spend more money, but they are not willing to do so themselves. They angrily deride the rich for exploiting every single tax deduction or shelter legally open to them, but then they drive to their CPA during tax season and demand exactly the same thing. Commercials abound “don’t pay a dime more than you owe”, but it’s somehow reprehensible behavior if the person is rich.
Maddening.