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Pharma Bro Sentenced to 7 Years


downzy

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As much as I dislike revelling in the anguish of others, this news was definitely a little satisfying.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/martin-shkreli-weeps-before-being-sentenced-to-7-years-i-took-down-myself?ref=home

Keep in mind, this is the guy who raised the price of life saving AIDS drugs by 5000 percent and then acted like a dick when testifying in Congress.

Now he cries in open court on receiving a 7 year sentence.  

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On a serious note though, 7 years is a rough bit of bird, I shouldn’t laugh at the mans misfortune, he’ll probably at least a couple of years and he don’t look like he’s cut out for porridge, hope he does alright inside though i dont suppose they’d put a lad like that in maximum security, probably end up on a cushy one but still, porridge is porridge.

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32 minutes ago, Oldest Goat said:

This guy has a very punchable face and voice. He's the little prick that won't release the Wu Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin

They seized that album so he no longer has it (in physical form atleast).

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10 hours ago, downzy said:

As much as I dislike revelling in the anguish of others, this news was definitely a little satisfying.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/martin-shkreli-weeps-before-being-sentenced-to-7-years-i-took-down-myself?ref=home

Keep in mind, this is the guy who raised the price of life saving AIDS drugs by 5000 percent and then acted like a dick when testifying in Congress.

Now he cries in open court on receiving a 7 year sentence.  

He deserves everything he gets. God knows how many people suffered because of his greed. Medication should be honestly free. Healthcare shouldn't be for a for-profit industry, IMO.

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11 minutes ago, Fashionista said:

He deserves everything he gets. God knows how many people suffered because of his greed. Medication should be honestly free. Healthcare shouldn't be for a for-profit industry, IMO.

He is not sentenced for the price hike, that price hike wasn't even illegal. 

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Pharma sets the prices themselves in the US. It's part of the American capitalistic system. It would have worked better if pharma didn't have patent protection on many of the drugs, and hence no competition. Capitalism only works when you have competition. In Europe there is price control. After Shkreli went completely overboard with his price hike, US politicians had enough and both Clinton and Trump talked about price control during the election. This worries pharma tremendously, because US is their biggest market due to higher profits. It also worries some on the right who believe that price control is a "sosialistic" mechanism. If it is introduced, it could potentially result in pharma having less money for drug development.

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All those pharmaceutical companies are worried.  They've been "marketing drugs".  It's one thing to supply drugs, it's a whole other thing to be a drug pusher.  There was a reason we suddenly needed a Walgreens on every corner and it is cheaper to buy a 90 day supply.  There's a big difference between a normal feeling and a mental illness but you tell the doctor you've got a problem and suddenly you've got a diagnosis and need a pill.  They've been busted on opiods and it's about to come to light.  Time to get your money out of pharmaceutical stocks.

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As @SoulMonster pointed out already, he isn't going to prison because he fucked over thousands of ill people who needed these life saving drugs. He's only going to prison because he fucked over rich investors by lying to them.

A great show on Netflix which had an episode about the pharma price hikes is "Dirty Money", it shows how they set it up and how Shkreli is basically just a fall-guy for a much larger shitshow that's still effecting thousands of American citizens. Each episode is about how shitty people will do very shitty things to make money. eg. VW emissions scandal, payday loans companies, HSBC laundering money for the Sinoloa drugs cartel. It's disturbing, but not in the least bit surprising tbh.

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The point of capitalism is that the market will regulate prices in an automatic process. If a seller demands more money for a product than a buyer is willing to pay, no transaction takes place. The seller has to lower the prices to a point where the seller still has a profit and the buyer feels the product is worth the money. And if a seller has high profits, then competitors will quickly start selling the same product and through the dynamics of competition the prices will be lowered. Americans love this principle. Americans love capitalism, in an almost blind way.

But capitalism doesn't work so well when the product is a life-saving medicine. Then the buyer is willing to pay anything. Literally anything. And it doesn't work so well when it takes competitors 10-15 years to have their own copy-drug on the market.

Up until now pharma has shown moderation when they have set their prices in the US. They have known that if they were too greedy, if they charged too much even in situations where they had monopoly on important medicines, the backlash could be devastating. And additionally, pharma companies consist of humans too, with moral sense. 

Then Shkreli came along.

So a question to Americans here: Are you willing to adopt price control, like we have in Europe, and which is a tool of socialism, to prevent future Shkrelis? It's a curb on capitalism. You end up with capitalism light.  

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21 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

The point of capitalism is that the market will regulate prices in an automatic process. If a seller demands more money for a product than a buyer is willing to pay, no transaction takes place. The seller has to lower the prices to a point where the seller still has a profit and the buyer feels the product is worth the money. And if a seller has high profits, then competitors will quickly start selling the same product and through the dynamics of competition the prices will be lowered. Americans love this principle. Americans love capitalism, in an almost blind way.

But capitalism doesn't work so well when the product is a life-saving medicine. Then the buyer is willing to pay anything. Literally anything. And it doesn't work so well when it takes competitors 10-15 years to have their own copy-drug on the market.

Up until now pharma has shown moderation when they have set their prices in the US. They have known that if they were too greedy, if they charged too much even in situations where they had monopoly on important medicines, the backlash could be devastating. And additionally, pharma companies consist of humans too, with moral sense. 

Then Shkreli came along.

So a question to Americans here: Are you willing to adopt price control, like we have in Europe, and which is a tool of socialism, to prevent future Shkrelis? It's a curb on capitalism. You end up with capitalism light.  

Shkreli wasn't the first nor will he be the last to buy pharma patents or patent holders and jack drug prices sky high.  As someone earlier the thread mentioned, Valeant was in on this game well before Pharma Bro got a name for himself.  

You highlight what defenders of the American health-care system constantly fail to understand or explain.  Medical products and services suffer from inelastic demand.  A purely capitalist system finds a product or services' natural price, and that natural price concerning inelastic demand means more medical-based bankruptcies and preventable deaths.  

The constant call by conservatives and Republicans for more competition in the insurance market as the path to fixing medical and drug high prices is disingenuous and factually wrong.  Increased competition in the insurance market will do nothing to lower prices since those prices aren't set by insurance companies but by hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies; sectors that set prices based on high inelastic demand and limited supply.  The only other avenue is to lower prices other than government intervention and price controls is to dramatically loosen or eliminate regulations surrounding medical services and drugs.  Essentially creating a low-regulated medical sector where drugs are given insufficient testing and becoming a doctor takes far less training and education.  Should conservatives get their way on creating an unregulated health-insurance market in the US., their next stop would be to hollow out the FDA and allow for less trained individuals to perform increasingly more dangerous operations.  Actually, a lot of this is already happening in the U.S., with the increased expansion of surgery centres in the U.S. leading to increased surgery mortality.

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On 3/11/2018 at 4:47 AM, downliner said:

he isn't going to prison because he fucked over thousands of ill people who needed these life saving drugs. He's only going to prison because he fucked over rich investors by lying to them.

What a sad indictment of America! 

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