Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of the medicine Daraprim “from $13.50 per pill to $750 overnight”¹.
Martin Shkreli is the founder and chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, which raised the price of the drug Daraprim to $750 a tablet from $13.50. Credit Paul Taggart/Bloomberg, via Getty Images
This is a trend taking place now as there is another example of a near identical case in Canada as well where the drug “Cycloserine” which “is a critical drug used to treat a rare and dangerous form of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis”² had its prices increased by 2,000 percent after Rodelis Therapeutics obtained the rights to the vital drug.
Many concerned citizens are urging the government to impose regulations to prevent the exploitation of those desperate for these drugs. These issues relate to the topics of government intervention and business ethics that were discussed in previous lectures.
The government is being urged to help regulated in both cases by concerned citizens.
“Ottawa needs to regulate the price of those unpatented medicines … to prevent this happening again”.²
Sources:
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/09/21/ceo-of-company-that-raised-the-price-of-old-pill-hundreds-of-dollars-overnight-calls-journalist-a-moron-for-asking-why/
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/tb-drug-price-cycloserine-1.3237868