Older prescription drugs see huge price increase

[Whirlin]

Not a bad post Viril; 10/10 on style. Skimmed it really, had three major comments:

1) Health insurance ends up being a four party relationship, not just a three party... individual, employer, insurer, and service provider. While ACA introduced ability to obtain health insurance outside of employment... service offering options haven't reached a point of maturity yet to be competitive with service offerings through employers.

2) Profits are post R&D expenditures. Every dollar that is profit is in excess of R&D expenses. Your post implied that profits are subsequently used for R&D, with a portion going towards equity, rather than R&D being an expense. You kinda mixed up gross profit (sales less cost of goods sold) with profit. Also, a majority of the cash influx from investment comes during IPO, with additional potential returns if a company has a strong arm in treasury to manage buybacks and selloffs to play the market, yes, a cheaper way to raise assets relative to increasing liabilities for an emerging company. However, the implications of a public company are not purely in the books, but more in the board of director level, providing guidance to the company for their own interests, which is a potentially inherent problem with publically traded companies. The board can set the guidance for amount to be allocated versus R&D versus equity.

Now... all of that being said, profits MAY subsequently be dedicated towards R&D, assuming the company holds a large portion of the stock... and would still be an expense when the R&D expenses are realized/amortized.

3) The pricing argument. The problem is that you're applying elastic pricing models to an inelastic demand. It's not really as cut and dry of, "If you can't afford it, don't buy it", because within the healthcare market, the alternative is death. Application of an elastic pricing model to the health care is inherently saying that the rich are more deserving of life, and the poor don't deserve to live.

I think you've done an amazing job highlighting instances of financial incentive of new development becomes chased by competitors to reduce prices, but I think there are other, additional concerns in healthcare pricing that were left off... such as variable costs for goods/services not disclosed to consumers prior to delivery of such goods/sevices. But these implications are more due to the three/four party system.

[Latrinsorm]

The wealthy can afford fancy cars that shoot out radar and laser beams and have backup cameras and autobraking and 17 airbags, poor people not so much?

This seems like an odd analogy to make considering that the federal government successfully forced companies to include airbags on all cars, rich and poor alike. You are therefore arguing that the federal government could step in here and do the same.

Deciding what sort of insurance to get is not something you do with Jack Bauer holding a gun to your head. This strawman of duress is a farce you've invented.

Jack Bauer's body count over eight years was 267 people. I can promise you that preventable diseases in the United States are far more potent.

[Archigeek]

http://www.businessinsider.com/marti...d-trial-2017-8

Shkreli back in the news.

[Allereli]

http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/13/news...ond/index.html

bond revoked for, of all things, asking followers to pluck a hair from Hillary Clinton

[Gelston]

I blame all this on his time playing DR.

[Tgo01]

I blame all this on his time playing DR.

Since DR is going down the shitter it just proves everything this man touches turns to shit. I wonder if we can somehow harness this power for good...