Picture this: You’re a happy-go-lucky patient with a deadly parasitic infection called toxoplasmosis, and only one drug can aid you.
Why are you so happy-go-lucky?
That drug, Daraprim, exists and is only $13.50 a pill. Praise be.
But wait, one day you wake up and find the price of your lifesaving tablets was hiked by 5000 percent.
It will now cost you $750 every time you refill.
And who is to blame for your new crippling debt to match your crippling disease?
It’s CEO and founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals and all-around smug dude Martin Shkreli.
In an interview on Bloomberg, Shkreli claimed the reason for the increase is so the company can actually “turn a profit on the drug.”
Apparently, compared to other lifesaving drugs for cancers and other infectious diseases, Daraprim is a veritable steal at $13.50, despite the fact it only costs about $1 to produce.
In the world of privatized drug companies making money off sick or dying patients, not getting the maximum profit keeps CEOs awake at night.
Shkreli has stated in multiple interviews that Turing Pharmaceuticals is merely using the extra profits from Daraprim to research and eventually create a safer, better alternative to the drug.
And yet, Daraprim cures toxoplasmosis after taken for a long enough period.
But Turing continues to argue there’s something out there even better than the Daraprim — a drug that’s been used for 62 years — and his company must charge patients exorbitant costs to find it.
Clinics have already said they are scrambling to stockpile the drug or are using less effective options just so patients can still have access to the medical help they need.
So the patients with deadly infections are footing the bill on this medical venture, and Shkreli doesn’t seem to feel remotely bad about it.
However, if patients cannot pay for Daraprim, he says Turing Pharmaceuticals will give the drug away for free.
Free, as in without any profit.
That’s the very problem Shkreli said Turing was trying to avoid by buying Daraprim and raising its price.
I guess Shkreli assumes those who can pay the full price will pay the full price.
Why hike up the cost of the drug in the first place?
With no real improved substitute for a drug that completely cures the disease and no plans to indebt patients who cannot pay Daraprim’s new outrageous bill, it seems the company has backed itself into a wall with that question.
But another question, one posed in an interview with CNBC — and also asked by toxoplasmosis patients and doctors around the country — will Turing Pharmaceuticals ever lower the price of Daraprim?
Martin Shkreli put it simply with a conniving smirk: “No.”
As of Wednesday, Shkreli caved and told NBC he would lower the price in the coming weeks so the company would either make a smaller profit on the drug or break even.
Looks like America’s trend of bandwagoning hate and rage caught up to Shkreli.
But having a smear campaign as our last resort as consumers and patients is pretty sad.
This should have never happened in the first place and the fact that it did is a direct indication of our current health industry
Now, the fate of toxoplasmosis patients rests in the hands of a man who tweeted Eminem lyrics after being villainized by the media.
God help us.
meickhof@indiana.edu
@maggie_eickhoff
