Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

In after Baud. Damn.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

When I was faster i was always behind.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Encouraging, If True

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Encouraging, If True

by | 237 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

From the Newsweek article :

The world’s most hated man this week could well be Martin Shkreli, whose pharmaceutical company inexplicably raised the price last month of a decades-old drug needed to treat a complex parasitic infection by more than 5,400 percent. But there is a group of folks who are probably delighted that Shkreli thrust himself into the public eye in such a negative way: Federal prosecutors.

Since at least in January, Shkreli has been under criminal investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, court records show. And Shkreli is not alone—some of his business associates have also received grand jury subpoenas in the case…

The criminal investigation involves Retrophin, a public company where Shkreli served as an officer, director, and 10-percent owner of the outstanding stock before being ousted amid multiple allegations of misconduct. Retrophin focuses on the development, acquisition and commercialization of therapies for the treatment of catastrophic or rare diseases, and was founded by in 2011 by Shkreli.

The inquiry, according to court records and people with knowledge of the inquiry, involves such a vast number of suspected crimes it is difficult to know where to start. A quick summary of the government’s theory: If there was money, Shkreli took it. If there were facts to be revealed, Shkreli hid them. If there were securities laws, Shkreli broke them…

According to the court records and people with knowledge of the case, the allegations against Shkreli that are under investigation involve insider trading, disguising the purpose of corporate payments for his benefit, defrauding shareholders by snatching business opportunities for himself, destruction of evidence, failure to disclose material facts to shareholders and other potential crimes.

One of the key elements of the investigation involves allegations that Shkreli appropriated cash from Retrophin and used it to settle litigation from institutions and individuals who were investors in his hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, and then illegally classified them in the company’s books as consulting payments. In essence, if the allegations are true, Shkreli stole money from the company to resolve lawsuits that had nothing to do with Retrophin, then lied about what he did in filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission by misrepresenting how and why the cash was spent….

Much more detail at the link. Donald Trump could’ve warned Shkreli: The first rule for a successful long con is not to aggravate people who can put the hurt on you.
***********
Apart from sending a small prayer to Sekhmet, Goddess of Consequences, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

237Comments

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    The world’s most hated man this week could well be Martin Shkreli, whose pharmaceutical company inexplicably raised the price last month of a decades-old drug needed to treat a complex parasitic infection by more than 5,400 percent.

    Can we put this guy in a cage with the guy who shot that lion?

    Gawker is having fun with the sad story of a threesome gone wrong.

    A mysterious stabbing and suicide that rocked the campus of Yale University last spring took place in the midst of a three-way sex romp gone terribly awry, according to newly released documents from the New Haven Police Department….

    The circumstances of the incident, and the presence of the female undergraduate, have never been reported, leaving people who knew Carlisle and Michaud baffled by the crime. Both men grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire and were members of Yale’s Party of the Right, a hardcore right-wing division of the campus debating society.

    gawker.com/right-wing-threesome-gone-wrong-led-to-mysterious-yale-1731922759

    The best snarky comment:

    “This should serve as a warning to everyone who is thinking of taking a stab at a threesome.

    and

    “If things get too crazy, the safe word is lower taxes. It always is.”

    What’s on the agenda: Not much. Catching up on the Pope-alooza news.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    Good topic. Shkreli is a poster child for pychopaths shaking money out of the Pharma industry. He took a public good (a generic drug) and tried to privatize and exploit it.

    What he is doing should be illegal. (It is, in some other countries, isn’t it?)

    Did anyone else smile at hearing the drug was useful against parasitic infection? Talk about on point.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @Elizabelle:

    What he is doing should be illegal. (It is, in some other countries, isn’t it?)

    Is it? Do other countries have price regulations on drug manufacturers?

  17. 17.

    different-church-lady

    Read one of your goddamn law books sometime and learn something, you slope-brained slackjaws.

    At one point I was advised I was supposed to go easy on the composer of the preceding sonnet, because issues.

    ETA: Smite button done been pressed. Thus, preceding comment is now without context.

  19. 19.

    sharl

    @Baud: From here (bolding is mine):

    The story of Daraprim’s giant price increase is, more fundamentally, a story about America’s unique drug pricing policies. We are the only developed nation that lets drugmakers set their own prices — maximizing profits the same way that sellers of chairs, mugs, shoes, or any other seller of manufactured goods would.

    In Europe, Canada, and Australia, governments view the market for cures as essentially uncompetitive and set the price as part of a bureaucratic process — similar to how electricity or water are priced in regulated US utility markets.

    Other countries do this for drugs and medical care — but not other products, like phones or cars — because of something fundamentally unique about medication: If consumers can’t afford the product, they could have worse odds of living. In some cases, they face quite certain odds of dying. So most governments have decided that keeping these products affordable is a good reason to introduce more government regulation.

    I know little about the topic, but I’ve heard the explanation in the quoted text before. And on health and medical policy, Sarah Kliff usually seems to know her shit.

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:

    From an Atlantic article, although thrown out there with no supporting details: Martin Shkreli as the Face of U.S. Healthcare

    In the last 72 hours since that made national news, Shkreli’s attitude and confidence have been duly noticed, reminding Americans that we live in the only country where drug companies set their own prices for life-saving medications.

    … With an easily dislikeable villain comes an easy shift in the national conversation toward pharmaceutical prices and predatory practices that exploit the sick. Because Shkreli has been called a “morally bankrupt sociopath,” a “garbage monster,” and “everything that is wrong with capitalism,” people have noticed the ground on which he stands.

    Interview downstream with a patent attorney, who places a lot of blame on drug company mergers and failures. He’s alarmed by the vultures swooping in, and the potential oligopolies when drugs need certain ingredients or have a supply chain problem.

    I asked Alfred Engleberg, a patent attorney for whom the Engelberg Center on Innovation and Law Policy at NYU is named. He worked for decades challenging patents on behalf of generic-medication manufacturers. Engleberg does believe the Daraprim price increase is the direct result of the supply and demand problem, in that over the last decade the number of companies producing any given medication has fallen significantly, due to mergers and business failures. It takes two to three years and costs around $1 million to gain approval for a generic drug, assuming you can find a source of manufacture for the active ingredient, he explained. Many drugs are down to three or fewer manufacturers, creating oligopolies. When one or two of those competitors has a raw material interruption, an FDA-compliance problem, or for any other reason decides to stop producing the drug, a monopoly results. The company can charge anything it wants.

    “A new breed of greedy CEOs is taking advantage of the rules of capitalism to make a killing,” Engelberg said. He explains that it’s simply not worth the investment for most companies to take up a low-volume drug that sells at a low price. Daraprim was a low-volume drug selling at a low price. If another company wants to start selling generic pyrimethamine, it could drive the price of brand-name Daraprim back down. But that generic company wouldn’t make much money, so why bother?

    What can be done? Stop the mergers, Engelberg implores. It is when profits erode on established products due to competition that businesses will seriously invest in innovation; not when they are thriving monopolies. Loosen the regulatory process to make it possible for drugs approved in Europe, India, and elsewhere to be rapidly approved in the U.S. on a reciprocity basis to alleviate shortages or price gouging. [Hillary] Clinton’s plan does allow for this.

  25. 25.

    mclaren

    @Baud:

    Do other countries have price regulations on drug manufacturers?

    HOLY.

    FUCKING.

    SHIT.

    Do you people not realize that every other first-world country has stringent price controls on their pharmaceuticals???????

    I quote from the government report “Pharmaceutical Price Controls in OECD Countries: Implications for U.S. consumers, pricing, research and development, and competition.”

    ita.doc.gov/td/chemicals/drugpricingstudy.pdf

    The study examined the drug price regulatory systems of 11 OECD countries and found that all rely on some form of price controls to limit spending on pharmaceuticals. The principal methods these governments employ are reference pricing, approval delays and procedural barriers, restrictions on dispensing and prescribing, and reimbursement.

    These methods prevent companies from charging a market-based price for their products. (..)

    The most direct method the OECD governments we examined use to control prices is to set the sales price and make sales at any other price illegal. Governments often are the dominant market participant and may negotiate favorable prices with manufacturers by leveraging this monopsonistic power. Such negotiations generally result in prices lower than they would be in a free market.

    Yes, because the fucking free market doesn’t work when people will D*I*E if they don’t get the drug.

    Seriously.

    Do the people in the Balloon-Juice commentariat not realize how insanely bizarre America’s for-profit health care system actually is compared to the rest of the world?

    No other first-world country lets pharmaceutical companies set any price they want for the drugs they manufacture. Because every other first-world country realizes that this is an invitation to massive fraud, theft, and the deaths of tens of thousands, if not millions, of sick people who get priced out of being able to afford the drugs they need to stay alive.

    Christ on a pogo stick, you people are dense and ignorant.

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    Per the Atlantic article, Hillary has a few good proposals about dealing with intending Shkrelis.

    In Des Moines, HRC proposed a monthly $250 cap on prescription drug out of pocket cost.

    From an AP story on the event:

    The Democratic presidential candidate said at a forum in Iowa on Tuesday that she wants to protect consumers while promoting innovation and putting an end to profiteering in the pharmaceutical industry.

    Her plan would place a monthly cap of $250 on covered out-of-pocket prescription drug costs to help patients with chronic or serious health conditions. It would also deny tax breaks for televised direct-to-consumer advertising and require drug companies that receive taxpayers’ support to invest in research and development.

    “It has gotten to the point where people are being asked to pay, not just hundreds but thousands of dollars for a single pill,” Clinton said. “And I can tell you, that is not the way a market is supposed to work. That is bad actors making a fortune off of people’s misfortune.”

    AP calls Obama’s healthcare plan “controversial” [of course], says pharma industry says Clinton’s plan will restrict Americans’ access to drugs, and that

    Republicans accused Clinton of embracing the health care law to draw attention away from inquiries over her use of a private email system as Obama’s secretary of state.

    Because no one can deal with more than one issue at a time, in GOP-Land.

    From the Atlantic story (link above):

    “We’re going to start holding the drug companies accountable to drive down the prices,” Clinton added. That will be more difficult. The power of pharmaceutical-industry lobbying kept price controls out of the Affordable Care Act. Even the power to negotiate prices and to create price competition between alternative products did not make it into the Affordable Care Act. Clinton’s plan would allow Medicare to negotiate for lower prices on medications and increase competition for generic versions of medications, which Medicare could do because of its substantial purchasing power.

    FWIW, and don’t quote me, I think it’s possible Medicaid already has that power to negotiate.

  30. 30.

    jl

    @Elizabelle:

    Not sure what you mean by ‘no supporting details’, but I believe that the first paragraph in your last block quote, Engleberg gives an accurate picture. Shortages of generic drugs have been more frequent, so much so that how to handle unexpected shortages of generics is taught to docs and f*rm*c*sts, nurse practitioners, etc. It is a considered a real problem in the health care industry.

    Some of the problem can be solved by increasing international trade in drugs, but big shots, especially large drug companies hate that because it reduces their ability to control supply and charge the price they want.

    But there are some generics that are only produced by a few plants in the world, so some upheaval in the Indian drug industry or contamination problems at one plant, or problem in a supply chain problem so some factory in SE Asia cannot get active ingredients can cause a shortage.

    And then you add nasty corporate gouging games, it is becoming an increasing problem.

  31. 31.

    bystander

    Hating on the free market is the same as killing other Americans.

    Just heard that the Justices who will skip the Pope’s address will be Roberts, Alito and Scalia. Guess they’re afraid of how obviously hypocritical they would look, sitting in front of the head of their church.

    Caught some of the MSNBC coverage today. More pontificating from the commentators than from the object of their soliloquies.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    @mclaren:

    I was asking about the nature of the price regulations, not whether they exist. A single payer for example sets prices through its purchasing power rather making a particular price unlawful.

  33. 33.

    bemused

    I don’t know how many news shows Shkreli rushed to appear on this week. I saw three and on every one, he was smiling inappropriately, smirking. I don’t know how he would be diagnosed, a sociopath or the like but there’s askew in his head.

  34. 34.

    eemom

    Having crowed here more than once about going to the same high school as Elena Kagan, I must now admit that to the horror of myself and fellow alums, this scumbag went there too. He donated $1 million to the school (which is publicly funded and always in need of money), and there’s a debate now raging about whether it should be given back.

  35. 35.

    RK

    This is not the first time the 32-year-old Mr. Shkreli, who has a reputation for both brilliance and brashness, has been the center of controversy. He started MSMB Capital, a hedge fund company, in his 20s and drew attention for urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve certain drugs made by companies whose stock he was shorting.

  37. 37.

    sharl

    @Elizabelle: The associated Vox tweets were horribly, provocatively click-baity; I hope Kliff’s good post on the topic didn’t lose potential readers because they were pissed about the tweets.

    One Vox writer – I’m guessing a youngster looking to meet his click quota, maybe? – titled his post “Martin Shkreli is an American hero. Here’s why.” So that guy went beyond a horrible linking tweet and right to a horribly titled post. The point of the post (I ain’t linking it, on principle) was that this horrible hedge fund dude shone a much-needed light on how drugs are priced in the U.S., thus…making him…a…heeero, apparently.

    One responding tweeter took this to its logical conclusion: “adolf hitler drew attention to antisemitism by doing the holocaust. thank you hitler”

    Kids, on serious topics like this, let good content sell itself, don’t get into the Crazy Eddie advertising thing.

  38. 38.

    Elizabelle

    I think Martin Shkrelis did us a favor, in being poster jackhole for pharmaceutical venture capitalism. It’s an issue whose time has come.

    Perhaps we grateful taxpayers could thank him with 3 squares and a bed. Sounds like the feds are quite interested in his business activities.

    Much like the unnamed school administrators in Irving, TX may have made life a little bit easier for smart Muslim (and any) kids.

  41. 41.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mclaren:

    you’re just some schmuck paid to disrupt liberal and progressive forums with conservatard disinformation like “it’s legally impossible to do anything about Wall Street corruption.”

    Link or stfu.

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Brachiator:

    Honestly, I feel sorry for the young woman who got caught up in their weird psychodrama. I’m sure some jackass is going to release her name and try to drive her to suicide as well (because she must be a bitch who forced the guy to try and kill his best friend, amirite?)

  51. 51.

    Thoughtful Today

    lol

    Omnes Omnibus, an avid supporter of Corporate Healthcare (and Hillary), offering, again, his usual argument when faced with a critic: “shut the fuck up.”

  52. 52.

    Elizabelle

    @jl: Hi there. It was solely about the “only country without price controls” sentence. That fact was dropped in and never returned to.

    Incidentally, you mentioned an article you’d read about the CA GOP and their distaste for Carly Fiorina, and that the reader comments were scathing too.

    Linky? Sounded delicious.

  53. 53.

    Chris

    @the Conster:

    This is wonderful. (And in Bolivia, the country that elected Evo Morales, no less).

    I’ve said before that once you move past gender and sexuality, the Catholic Church is closer to the 1960s New Left than to either of our political parties. (Treatment of the poor and working class, morality of “greed is good” economics, war, torture, the environment, you name it). Sounds like Pope Francis came to the same conclusion.

  55. 55.

    Elizabelle

    @the Conster: Wow.

    We must liveblog the Radical Pope’s visit to Congress tomorrow, must we not? Might be time to break out a Mimosa or Bloody non-Virgin Mary to accompany.

  57. 57.

    LWA

    Even more delightful is the banner ad I am seeing that simply says, “Thank You, Governor Walker” above a pic of the Durr-face.

    Yes, every candidate deserves gratitude. Some for entering the race, others for leaving it.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    @mclaren: Thanks re Part D. I think I saw the Medicaid bit in an article yesterday; which, I cannot say.

    And neither Richard nor Omnes is a paid astroturfer. They put up good stuff, not from the borg.

    As do you, quite often!! Not 100% but ….

  64. 64.

    cckids

    @Baud:

    Do other countries have price regulations on drug manufacturers?

    I was going to answer this, but scrolled a little and holy shit, did mcclaren ever get there first!

    Never mind.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @Chris:

    once you move past gender and sexuality, the Catholic Church is closer to the 1960s New Left than to either of our political parties.

    Once you move past the dick, my uncle is my aunt.

  68. 68.

    Archon

    I read that Bernie Sanders has an idea for a government funded reward system for pharmaceutical companies. They get a big time payout from the government for breakthrough medicines but they don’t get exclusive use, as Bernie’s plan would reform our crazy patent system when it comes to medicine.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    To return to the snarkage, does anyone else find it ironic that this guy got caught because he increased the price on an anti-parasite drug? The jokes about “professional courtesy” write themselves.

  71. 71.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Lock him up. Forever. In the deepest dungeons of Hogwarts. Where the Umbridge woman will supervise him doing lines.

  72. 72.

    jl

    And, to repeat a comment I made yesterday, if you use annual FDA approvals of New Molecular Entities (NMEs), or basically new drug molecules that do good things that were not known before, as the measure of the rate of innovation in drugs, there is not much evidence that changing US IP or patent or licensing and marketing laws and regulations have had much effect on anything. The longer you go back to see rate of innovation over last 50 years or so, less evidence there is of much effect.

    More evidence that streamlining FDA approval process had an effect, but that is controversial.

    So, when drug bigshots just say that any change in how we finance drugs will bring down innovation, they need to present some evidence. But I never hear or see them do that. They just assert it like it has to be true.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @jl: Drug bigshots are worried about one thing, and one thing only: the size of their bonuses that are tied to the short term bottom line.

  77. 77.

    mclaren

    @Elizabelle:

    Well, the problem is that Shkreli will have done us all a favor if his horrible example spurs enough public outrage to force new legislation mandating price controls in U.S. health care.

    But, as I have been relentlessly pointing out since 2009 when the ACA was being debated, the U.S. health care contains virtually no price controls of any kind.

    In fact, it’s even worse than just “no price controls” — doctors staff the obscure boards which decide prices for the various medical procedures. See the article “The Fix Is In: The hidden public-private cartel that sets health care prices,” Slate magazine September 2009:

    To have any hope of meaningful national health reform, therefore, we must address the perverse financial incentives that created and continue to inflame this problem.

    The root of the shortage can be traced to 1985, when a Harvard economist named William Hsiao developed a scale to measure the relative value of every single one of the thousands of services provided by doctors, a job later compared to measuring “the exact amount of anger in the world.” For example, Hsiao’s team deemed that a hysterectomy required 3.8 times more mental effort and 4.47 times more technical skill than a psychotherapy session. In 1992, Medicare formally adopted Hsiao’s concept; private insurers followed suit. Today, this relative value-based system sets the prices—and therefore drives the priorities of American medicine.

    Here’s how it works. Doctors do a job—like placing a coronary artery stent, reading an EKG, or spending an hour examining and diagnosing a patient with a complex problem like insomnia—and earn something called “relative value units.” In 2009, according to Medicare, the stent guy scores about 24 units for his relatively quick procedure, the EKG person gets 0.5 units for the 10 seconds his job requires, and the poor internist gets only 2.5 units for his hour of time. Figuring a doctor’s total take per task is straightforward: Medicare adds up a doctor’s total RVUs, multiplies the total by a fixed amount (roughly $40 right now), and writes the check.

    It’s clear that Medicare and all major insurers place far more relative value on fancy procedures like stents, EKGs, skin biopsies, CT scans, and bowel clean-outs than they do on actual face-to-face time with patients. Procedures, they have decreed, require more mental effort and skill than seeing actual people. The implications are obvious. Just visit any hospital: The dermatology, radiology, and cardiology centers that depend on high-volume, relatively quick procedures have gleaming new facilities, while the primary care and psychiatry clinics languish, since they earn their keep from poorly compensated face-to-face time with patients. And, obviously, specialists make more money than primary care doctors. (Even trainees grasp this; recently, only a single graduating internist out of a class of 50 residents at Massachusetts General Hospital planned to become a primary care doctor.)

    Fundamentally, the entire payment model of American health care drives medical centers, doctors, and hospital managers to push for more fancy procedures at the expense of primary care doctors. How’d we get here? Since 1992, Medicare has depended almost entirely on the American Medical Association for guidance on how relative values should be set. In a devastating critique published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, scholars from the Urban Institute and the University of California-San Francisco explained that Medicare uncritically accepted 95 percent of the AMA’s recommendations, which are formulated by the group’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee, or RUC.

    Source: “The Fix Is In: The hidden public-private cartel that sets health care prices,” Slate magazine September 2009.

    There’s a myth in American media (*cough* Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier *cough*) that when gross corruption gets exposed in America, our noble government and wonderful population moves quickly to eliminate it.

    The reality is that nowadays, in 2015, when gross corruption and malfeasance gets exposed in America, our leaders often tell us “suck on it,” and the cowed U.S. population mumbles, “okay,” and shuffles away dispirited, accepting the outrage.

    This happened when the massive NSA spying got revealed.

    It happened when CIA torture was revealed.

    It happened when Barack Obama’s secret assassination list got exposed.

    It happened after the global financial crash in 2009, when Obama refused to prosecute any of the Wall Street crime lords and instead sent the Department of Homeland Security out to crack the heads of the Occupy protesters.

    Will it happen again now, with Martin Shkreli?

    I don’t know. But judging by recent history, it doesn’t look promising. America has now gone so far down the road to oligarchy and the abandonment of the rule of law that our leaders seem to feel no need to change their behavior even after their grossly criminal and appallingly unethical thieveries and malfeasances get publicly revealed. Not one member of the Bush maldaministration has yet been indicted, after all.

  79. 79.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    I am a pagan, and not religious at all. However, I have to say I fucking love Pope Francis. Google Sofi Cruz. He embodies “suffer the little children to come to me”. The moment when he tells his security detail to bring Sofi to him when a DC Cop was trying to shuffle her away was epic.

  80. 80.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @jl:

    At one point last year, there was a shortage of sterile water, because the one plant that produced it was shut down by the FDA for contamination. And it went on for several months. At the time, G was working for a home infusion [p-word] and it caused all kinds of problems for them and their patients.

    And, of course, no one else wanted to produce it, because there’s only so much of a markup you can put on H2O to make it more profitable.

  81. 81.

    Elizabelle

    @mclaren: It’s dreadfully corrupt.

    But I sense the worm turning a bit. I think the Republicans are on the ropes, although it’s hard to glean that from our glamorpuss press and Morning Joe types.

    Trump is one manifestation, Bernie Sanders is another. He’s forcing Hillary to the left; that’s good.

  82. 82.

    Thoughtful Today

    As Bernie wrote in 2011, “We Must Stop the Rampant Fraud in the Health Care Industry”:

    What we have seen over the last several decades is the systemic fraud perpetrated by private insurance companies, private drug companies, and private for-profit hospitals ripping off the American people and the taxpayers of this country to the tune of many billions of dollars.

    The rampant fraud is another reason why our current health care system, dominated by private insurance companies, is the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world. Its function is not to provide quality health care, but to make huge profits for those who own the companies. With 1,300 private insurance companies and thousands of different health benefit programs designed to maximize profits, our country spends an incredible 30 percent of each health care dollar on administration and billing, exorbitant CEO compensation packages, advertising, lobbying and campaign contributions. Public programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are administered for much less.

    Bernie’s leadership on issues and policies is what makes him the best candidate for President.

  85. 85.

    mclaren

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Lock him up. Forever.

    I agree with the sentiment, but the problem is that what Martin Shkreli did is perfectly legal under current U.S. health care law.

    As I’ve said before, Shkreli is the symptom, not the disease. We need to change the broken U.S. health care system, not tinker around the edges. Richard Mayhew’s constant microdetailed digressions about our broken U.S. health care system are designed to obscure this crucial fact.

    We need to change the U.S. health care system, not focus on vile scum like Martin Shkreli. And the only reasonable workable way to fix America’s broken health care system is to do what every other OECD country has done: take profit out of health care. Stop running health care as a for-profit business in which the individual actors (medical devicemakers, doctors, hospitals, imaging and medical test clinics, pharmaceutical manufacturers) are free to charge whatever the market will bear.

    Really, this is not rocket science, people. Every other first world country has solved the problem of providing affordable health care to their populations. They did it with nationalized single-payer (yes, yes, Switzerland looks like an exception — but it actually isn’t, and I can go into the wonky details, but that’s irrelevant to the main point here) and price controls. They did by getting rid of the free market with respect to health care.

  86. 86.

    bemused

    @Elizabelle:

    That’s another odd thing about creep Shkreli so eager to be on tv. You would expect corps hugely jacking up pharma prices to keep as low a profile as possible. Shkreli did the opposite seeming to crave attention.

  87. 87.

    ShadeTail

    I would just like to point out that, while this douchebag is screwing AIDS patients and V.W. is revealed as having been cheating on emissions standards, Republicans are busy claiming that government regulation is too onerous. Jeb said so just yesterday.

    So this is a pretty big political issue, lest we forget that an election is going on.

  88. 88.

    the Conster

    @Elizabelle:

    I hope someone does – I’ll be at work. I wonder if the goopers will stand and turn their backs, or come up with some other kind of childish antics that will reveal them as the lizard brains they are.

  92. 92.

    different-church-lady

    @mclaren:

    Really, this is not rocket science, people. Every other first world country has solved the problem of providing affordable health care to their populations.

    This is the United States of America. It isn’t rocket science; every goddamned thing is bomb disarmament science.

  100. 100.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    To return to the snarkage, does anyone else find it ironic that this guy got caught because he increased the price on an anti-parasite drug?

    It sounds as if he was already being investigated for the misdeeds at Retrophin well before his most recent round of dickishness.

  101. 101.

    Gravenstone

    @LWA: You’ll note the ad in question is from one of the super PACs that was bankrolling him. Doubtless thanking him for clearing the path for their money to make its way to another deserving sociopath.

  102. 102.

    Cacti

    @Thoughtful Today:

    Bernie’s leadership on issues and policies is what makes him the best candidate for President.

    You must have forgotten the link to the legislation that Bernie shepherded through Congress during his 24-year legislative career to change the conditions he inveighed against.

  106. 106.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Cacti: Be careful or TT will call you a supporter of corporate healthcare.

    @Thoughtful Today: You should learn what a troll is. Pro-tip: It’s not someone who simplydisagrees with or questions something you say.

  109. 109.

    mclaren

    @Thoughtful Today:

    I would suggest that either Hillary or Sanders unleash the U.S. department of justice against major health care providers, doctors groups, imaging and blood work clinics, medical devicemakers, and the big hospitals by using the RICO statues. RICO permits the accused racketeering involved corrupt organizations to have their assets seized. If the U.S. government charges some of the more obscenely overpriced and corrupt hospitals and medical devicemakers and big pharma companies with RICO and seized their assets pending a trial, you would rapidly find that the corruption in the American health care system disappeared overnight. RICO offers some extremely powerful tools to prosecutors.

    And there is outright flagrant criminal fraud from top to bottom in the U.S. health care industry. Anti-competitive practices are rampant, non-disclosure agreements are the rule rather than the exception: contracts locking in high prices (illegal under current Sherman anti-trust statues) are the norm.

    Christina Bernstein, a medical-device engineer and independent sales representative based in San Francisco, sells disposable surgical tools made mostly out of plastic that she estimates are manufactured for about $40 each. These are marked up and sold to hospitals for as much as $350, she said, for a single use in a surgery on a patient.
    “But if you were to get a detailed bill of what the hospital was charging the insurance company for the insured patient, those things get marked up to something like $1,200,” Bernstein said. “It’s ridiculous. There’s no open competition.”
    With doctors and hospitals sprinkled in every congressional district and wielding their clout, a year of health reform in Congress has overlooked some of the biggest cost drivers in American medicine.

    “While the talk surrounding health reform has been about problems with the health insurance market, and I don’t want to suggest that’s entirely misplaced, I think market power on the part of providers, doctors and hospitals is a bigger issue,” said Martin Gaynor, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University.

    Jerry Flanagan, health care policy director for Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica, said the heath care system is “in a tug-of-war between warring tribes … over who has market dominance over price.” Flanagan doesn’t think the insurance industry is losing the battle.

    Consumers have almost no control over costs, no ability to shop and little incentive to do so because most patients neither buy their own insurance nor pay their medical bills directly. But they foot the bill in skyrocketing premiums, deductibles and co-pays.

    Source: “Experts warn of medical industry cartels’ power,” The San Francisco Chronicle, 21 February 2010.

    One of the biggest recent criminal frauds in U.S. healthcare is the use of firmware in implanted medical devices to force “planned obsolescence.” The medical devicemaker declares that a perfectly good insulin pump is now obsolete and must be replaced because the new model runs different firmware in its electronics. And guess what? The new model of insulin pump costs $49,000, far more than the original insulin pump. It’s just the health care version of the HP scam of charging outrageous monopoly prices for bubblejet printer ink, and preventing anyone from getting third-party ink cartridges by inserting special computer chips in the cartridges that shuts the printer down if it detects non-HP-manufactured cartridges.

    The big-ticket item for Steve H.’s day at Mercy was the Medtronic stimulator, and that’s where most of Mercy’s profit was collected during his brief visit. The bill for that was $49,237.

    According to the chief financial officer of another hospital, the wholesale list price of the Medtronic stimulator is “about $19,000.” Because Mercy is part of a major hospital chain, it might pay 5% to 15% less than that. Even assuming Mercy paid $19,000, it would make more than $30,000 selling it to Steve H., a profit margin of more than 150%. To the extent that I found any consistency among hospital chargemaster practices, this is one of them: hospitals routinely seem to charge 2½ times what these expensive implantable devices cost them, which produces that 150% profit margin.

    As Steve H. found out when he got his bill, he had exceeded the $45,000 that was left on his insurance policy’s annual payout limit just with the neurostimulator. And his total bill was $86,951. After his insurance paid that first $45,000, he still owed more than $40,000, not counting doctors’ bills.

    Source: “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” TIME magazine, 4 April 2014.

    The latest scam by doctors is called “drive-by doctoring,” where a hospital that’s in-network will hire a doctor who is out-of-network. Naturally, the out-of-network doc charges $117,000 for making a few stitches…and the insurance company must pay.

    See the New York Times article “After Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t Know,” The New York Times, 20 September 2014. Oddly enough, Richard Mayhew’s rosy fairytales about the alleged wonderfulness of the ACA doesn’t include horror stories like this.

    These are all examples of outright criminal fraud. They’re misrepresentation with intent to defraud. They can and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and with RICO statutes to back up those indictments, you’d see such a wave of fear run through the U.S. health care industry that prices would plummet overnight.

  111. 111.

    Elizabelle

    and the Pope is hugging children at the Vatican embassy.

    NBC local affiliate broke into programming to show him driving up in the Fiat 500.

  112. 112.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    And, of course, no one else wanted to produce it, because there’s only so much of a markup you can put on H2O to make it more profitable.

    Nestlé would be happy to step in, via Great Waters of America.

  115. 115.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Archon: Prizes instead of royalties. The idea’s been out there for a while as an alternative to the existing IP regime.

    Dava Sobel’s book on the longitude prize in 18th c. England a few years ago I won’t say sparked, but popularized perhaps, the discussion of the concept.

  116. 116.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Gian:

    Riding in a Fiat is apparently something of a diplomatic choice as well since it’s a nod to his new home country of Italy. Fiat now owns Chrysler and Jeep, so the new Popemobile is based on a Jeep chassis (or so MSNBC tells me).

  119. 119.

    Thoughtful Today

    Supporters put up http://FeelTheBern.org

    iirc it was a team of supporters that came together organically on Reddit and Bern’ed the midnight oil to pull together Bernie’s position statements and supporting videos.

  120. 120.

    feebog

    @mclaren:

    You act like you are the only poster on Ballon Juice who has ever advocated for a single payer system. You aren’t. You are however one of the most obnoxious, tiresome twits to post here. Yes we know the system is broken. Yes, we know other first world countries have health plans that provide more value for less cost per capita. Yes, we know that the PPACA is imperfect. BTW, Richard Mayhew adds more value in one post than you ever have in your entire span of posting here. Fuck off.

  125. 125.

    joel hanes

    @mclaren:

    Richard Mayhew’s constant microdetailed digressions about our broken U.S. health care system are designed

    Objection. Imputes motive without evidence.

    That said, I enjoy mclaren’s rants — it’s nearly the pure Usenet/Jesse Garon/Discordian strain, and a fading art.
    Even the gratuitious insults and the stretchers ( such as the one above ) are part of the schtick.

    And he’s often good on the non-personal facts.

    I don’t understand the apparent need to pick fights over trivia, but that’s just me.

  126. 126.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Baud: Tell me about it. I’ve got my old sextant and HO 249 sight reduction tables on a shelf across the living room from me.

  128. 128.

    01jack

    I’m starting to imagine that I hear spooky music in the background while reading some of the above comments …

    Also,
    I only recently re-read Longitude.

  130. 130.

    Thoughtful Today

    What’s especially frustrating about the drug price gouging is that often the research used to develop medications was done with public research grants and done at public Universities.

    Extra obscenity: Drug corporations often spend more in advertising than in research and development.

  132. 132.

    Morzer

    @joel hanes:

    *in the voice of mclaren*

    The trivia are the facts you warthogfaced buffoon who is a Wall St shill for big candy forcing American children to accept filthy European chocolate while the indentured serfs of Hershey suffer unspeakable indignities.

  133. 133.

    Mary G

    @Elizabelle: Here’s a good link about the Repubs in California not liking Carly.

    My favorite quote:

    “My concern about Carly Fiorina … is her management style, her abrasiveness, her callousness, her constant approach to doing things in a combative way,” he said. “Donald Trump has proven he can get away with it. We don’t know if she can get away with it.”

    Another article says she is polling at 5% here in the state.

  134. 134.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Some of the stories say it’s the roomiest Fiat, but I’m assuming that’s a relative term. Still, it’s a nice nod to Italy — he apparently also chose to fly Alitalia, though one wonders if they offer some kind of Papal discount. It would make sense.

  135. 135.

    GreenviewBrew

    I worked ten years as a (mutual fund supporting) research analyst on Wall Street covering healthcare. It didn’t take long to figure out the US HC system is massively fucked up (real-life experience has since backed that up) and inferior to most advanced countries. The fact that Medicare is prohibited from directly negotiating prices with device/pharma/biotech was a clear indication that lobbyist owned the system. Also, US is one of two countries that allows DTC advertising, which is useless at best. Healthcare simply isn’t free-market compatible.

    I’ll add that I found hedge fund people – and I dealt with them almost daily – to be the worst almost to the person. Mean, greedy, selfish and humorless. Sociopaths basically. They once “earned” good returns, but they’ve be trailing the markets for a long time now. At least there’re mostly grifting rich people.

  136. 136.

    Citizen Scientist

    So, I was watching the Pope’s visit to the WH today with some work colleagues and all I hear out of them is stuff like “[Obama] is so disrespectful.”, “Oh, wow the First Lady’s wearing black. She dresses like trash.”

    WTF does this even mean???? What are the RW memes about the President being “disrespectful”?

  137. 137.

    Davis X. Machina

    According to the Slate piece I mentioned, both Clinton (as senator) and Sanders were, or have been involved with prize-based reform of patents and medical IP. Unfortunately the Clinton link in the article has fallen to link-rot.

  140. 140.

    joel hanes

    @mclaren:

    And there is outright flagrant criminal fraud from top to bottom in the U.S. health care industry

    Just ask the Governor of Florida.

  141. 141.

    Morzer

    @Citizen Scientist:

    I think that disrespectful is the new uppity. There’s this strange, ongoing meme about how Obama doesn’t know his place, as opposed to the decorous citizens of Foamatthemouthia.

  151. 151.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @JPL: I am sure I’ll get around to pissing you off too. It is apparently what I am paid to do or something.

  154. 154.

    Morzer

    @Baud:

    I am sure those rumors about Omnes personally executing single-payer with a bullet to the back of the head are just exaggerations.

  159. 159.

    Cervantes

    @Brachiator:

    The older of the two guys — the one who defenestrated himself — worked on Santorum’s previous campaign.

    The apartment building used to be rather a nice hotel.

  162. 162.

    Gimlet

    politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/ted-cruz-republican-party-surrender-213179

    By Sen. Ted Cruz
    Today, President Barack Obama fights relentlessly for his liberal priorities. Like the Terminator, he never gives up, he never stops. And Republican leadership responds to every challenge by surrendering at the outset.

    President Obama demands of Congress: fund all of Obamacare, with no changes to help the millions being hurt by that failed law, or he will veto funding for the entire federal government. And Republican leadership backs down. President Obama demands: fund his unconstitutional executive amnesty—or he will veto funding for the entire federal government. And Republican leadership backs down. President Obama demands: give $500 million in taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood, a private organization under criminal investigation—or he will veto funding for the entire federal government. And Republican leadership backs down.

    The core of this capitulation comes from Republican leadership’s promise that “There will be no government shutdown.” On its face, the promise sounds reasonable. Except in practice it means that Republicans never stand for anything.

  163. 163.

    Mary G

    @Amir Khalid: Sorry, I got a “free access view” from the SF Chronicle. Here is another good nugget, which I remember from the election:

    Nick Wilson, 33, an Orange County property manager and conservative party activist, bitterly recalls Fiorina’s bashing of then-Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, a grassroots favorite, and said her weaknesses haven’t gone away.

    “She didn’t show up for the debate for years by not voting,” said Wilson, who worked for DeVore’s campaign. Wilson referenced 2010 stories that noted Fiorina’s record of voting in just five of 18 national, state and local elections when she was registered to vote in Santa Clara County.

    Records also showed she never cast a ballot in two other states where she’s lived: New Jersey and Maryland.

    Wilson said such negative information is still circulating on popular conservative websites such as FlashReport.org.

  168. 168.

    Chris

    @Gimlet:

    Today, President Barack Obama fights relentlessly for his liberal priorities.

    No “socialist” or “communist” slur?

    Weak.

  171. 171.

    different-church-lady

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    My mere presence seems to have angered two commenters this evening.

    Oh don’t flatter yourself: they were already angry long before they arrived.

  172. 172.

    Elizabelle

    @MomSense: Yes. And, truth to tell, I was glad all Obama filles were in fairly long skirts, cuz it was windy out on that tarmac.

    Pope seemed to be the only one not having trouble with his skirts.

  173. 173.

    jl

    @Davis X. Machina:

    I think a combination of alternative R&D financing strategies, including prizes for some type of research, would be a good idea.
    CEPR has quite a few reports on IP and patent issues and drug R&D

    Intellectual Property and Patents
    CEPR
    http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_cattags&view=cattagdetail&catid=80&tagid=7&Itemid=374

    But remember that Daraprim flap is not about patents, it is about what happens in generic drug markets where competition was supposed to hold down price, but development of alternatives for many of the generic drug’s uses and increasing economies of scale in production have produced little or not competition.

    And in the US, the many barriers to free international trade that exist in drug market is a fisable problem for many generic drugs (but not all).

  178. 178.

    Origuy

    @Citizen Scientist: Show them this.

    Meeting the Pope, how will I dress?
    Vatican protocol states that for papal hearings, women should wear long sleeves, formal black clothing and a black veil to cover the head. Since the 1980’s, however, the dress code (tailcoat for men, black dress and veil for women) has become far less rigid.

    Edit: I just saw pictures. She’s not wearing black, it’s baby blue.

  182. 182.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @TS:

    I think that for a lot of people, Pope Francis is kind of like the Dalai Lama — they like what he has to say, but they don’t really want or need to buy into the whole religion. And that’s perfectly fine.

  183. 183.

    Chris

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Take the consulate in Marseille instead, it’s warmer and prettier. And I believe that not being an ambassador, you won’t even need to go through the shit show of a Congressional confirmation.

  190. 190.

    Morzer

    I believe I’ve found mclaren’s unacknowledged brother:

    talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/jon-ritzheimer-debbie-stabenow-threat

    The open letter did not appear publicly on Ritzheimer’s Facebook page, but his supporters posted it on their profiles. In the letter, Ritzheimer, a former U.S. Marine, identified himself as a member of two loosely-organized militia groups — the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters — and announced that he and “a growing number of patriots” planned to arrest Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

    “She will be arrested for treason under Article 3 Section 3 of the Constitution,” the open letter read. “We have chosen her as our first target due to our strong ties with the Michigan State Militia and their lax gun laws that will allow us to operate in a manner necessary for an operation like this. After we successfully detain her we will continue to move across the country and arrest everyone involved with the Iran Nuke Deal. Even the President who brokered this deal.”

  191. 191.

    Cervantes

    @Chris:

    Thing is, that particular Ambassadorship comes with Monaco into the bargain.

    PS: On the other hand, so does the posting in Marseilles, if I recall correctly, so perhaps you’re right after all.

  193. 193.

    Gimlet

    From the IBT

    Democrats denounced Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio Tuesday over his campaign’s plans to hold a fundraiser at the spacious estate of a Texas real estate tycoon who collects Nazi artifacts. The fundraiser happened to be scheduled during Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and the holiest day on the faith’s calendar.

    Rubio, the junior, first-term U.S. senator from Florida, was holding the event in conservative philanthropist Harlan Crow’s home library, which features two paintings by Adolf Hitler, a signed copy of the dictator’s “Mein Kampf,” and a cabinet full of dinnerware and linens used by the Fuhrer, according to the Dallas Morning News. Tickets for the fundraising event ranged from $1,000 per person to $10,800.

  198. 198.

    Morzer

    @JPL:

    Following his Phoenix protest, which he told TPM he organized in solidarity with anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller after her “Draw Mohammed” event in Garland, Texas was attacked by two gunmen, a GoFundMe page appeared with the goal of raising $10 million to either protect Ritzheimer’s family or allow him to challenge Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Around that time, Ritzheimer told a local TV station that he thought he needed to go into hiding.

    Ritzheimer later made a reference to a “fake” GoFundMe campaign in a video he posted to Facebook, adding that “hackers have ruined my life.”

    “They’ve made fake Facebook accounts, fake GoFundMe accounts, fake — just all kinds of stuff,” he said in the video. “They’ve exposed my social. They’ve exposed everything about me, credit cards — you name it. They’re playing dirty.”

  199. 199.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:

    But remember that Daraprim flap is not about patents, it is about what happens in generic drug markets where competition was supposed to hold down price, but development of alternatives for many of the generic drug’s uses and increasing economies of scale in production have produced little or not competition.

    The key driver behind this is that it’s really hard to manufacture stuff to FDA standards. It can easily cost millions of dollars, and a year or two, to get manufacturing going on even the easiest to manufacture substance. That means that a company that has the market to itself has quite a while to gouge patients before the market has a chance to step in, and there’s considerable risk that somebody trying to enter the market can get shut out by the gouger reducing prices to squeeze them out once they look threatening. Once you regulate production as heavily as the FDA does- and I think that degree of regulation is absolutely necessary to ensure safety- you can’t pretend that the market can take care of prices.

  206. 206.

    different-church-lady

    @kc:

    Didn’t you get in McLaren’s face first?

    It’s not actually possible to get in mclaren’s face first.

  208. 208.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Morzer:
    I heard that Omnes Omnes removed Baud’s nomination filings from the FEC in 2007, thus forcing eight years of a Kenyan Marxist Muslim Anchor Baby on the US as president. If only a true American like Baud had been here to lead us in these difficult times, we would have single payer, bipartisanship, a wall on BOTH coasts AND around Hawaii, and there would be forty more Virgin Islands!

  210. 210.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: I’ve heard that the FDA approach to manufacturing quality regulation is very heavy handed and inefficient, and lawyerly in a bad way. I’d like to know more about it.

    Patent reform can help to some extent. One criticism of current US patent system is that the companies cheat on the information disclosure obligations and this causes problems in replicating the brand name drug. This is an area where statistical theory and practice is just not adequate to address real world problems. When generic makers have to guess too much on exactly how the pill is put together, they rely on equivalence testing, and that art is not good enough to work well in reality. It is expensive to do, FDA rules about it are arbitrary, but the results are not enough of a guarantee on a patient level for docs to feel comfortable switching between brand name and generics, or in this case from one generic to another in many cases.

  211. 211.

    Applejinx

    Dang. mclaren isn’t always on (hell, isn’t always bearable) but tonight on this topic mclaren is on FIRE.

    *applause*

    And my Mom’s a nurse, and I’m fairly politically engaged and interested in the health care issue, but I did not know we were the only semicivilized country that attempts to set drug prices through free market mechanisms. It honestly never occurred to me it’d be any different anywhere else, I guess I assumed that other countries’ drug companies were simply less aggressive about it.

    I learned something.

  212. 212.

    different-church-lady

    @kc: For the record, I personally witnessed the person in question preemptively getting in everyone’s face categorically.

    However, said action resulted in said post being nuked.

  214. 214.

    different-church-lady

    @kc: Well, it wasn’t really up long enough to piss everyone off.

    Therefore, subsequent posts were required towards that end.

  215. 215.

    RK

    Wasn’t there an ACA backroom deal where drug prices wouldn’t be touched and Big Pharma wouldn’t fight it?

  216. 216.

    Anne Laurie

    RK

    Wasn’t there an ACA backroom deal where drug prices wouldn’t be touched and Big Pharma wouldn’t fight it?

    That’s how I remember it, too — try googling Billy Tauzin, I think he was the legislator who set up the deal on his way out the door of Congress into a high-dollar lobbying spot.

  219. 219.

    J R in WV

    You will all hate me for this, but I enjoy mclaren’s posts. There is a little attitude problem sometimes, but he usually has lots of (apparent) facts to share with us. I assume they are facts, he is surely certain of his facts.

    He could lighten up a little, we here at B-J aren’t all part of the corporate-republican conspiracy, but other than his arrogant and condescending attitude, he seems like, well, sort of an overweening ass… wait. But the facts, those are good.

  220. 220.

    RSA

    @Davis X. Machina:

    According to the Slate piece I mentioned, both Clinton (as senator) and Sanders were, or have been involved with prize-based reform of patents and medical IP.

    Personally, I think prizes are a terrible idea for important stuff. Even the author of the Slate article makes a basic mistake:

    [Successful prizes] offered high rewards that presumably outweighed the costs of research as well as the profits that could be earned from diverting resources into alternate endeavors…

    Sure, for whoever wins the prize. But if you don’t? This is like saying that winning a Powerball jackpot outweighs the cost of the ticket.

    A lot of writing about prizes sees a big win with a relatively low outlay but ignores the not-very-hidden costs of competing for the prize and not getting it. There was a libertarian-ish front pager some years ago promoting prizes for stuff, and I asked him in a comment, “Would you be willing for all the personnel funding in your company to be pooled and given at the end of the year to the best employee?”

    I think it’s good to pay people for work. Otherwise what we get has the potential to be distorted, because contributions are then mainly from those who can afford to work for free.

  223. 223.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @J R in WV: mclaren’s grasp of legal issues is thin. He cites employment law cases to support criminal law arguments – just one example. He quotes the sections of the Constitution without noting the 200+ years of interpretation of those sections by the courts. The law tends to be complicated, but mclaren works in black and white. I don’t have a background in some of the other areas on which e comments, but I suspect that he brings the same lack of nuance and interpretation to those areas as he does to legal issues.

  224. 224.

    redshirt

    If you’re not reading McLaren’s posts you’re missing the best posts in this thread.

    End the McLaren hate. Welcome her ideas – and facts! Look there’s quotes and links and stuff!

  226. 226.

    redshirt

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sure, we all are. And you may disagree with most everything she says – maybe even factually. But I like the spirit, the fire.

    We are too content. We’re watching a plutocracy form before our eyes and no one says shit. McLaren says some shit. More people need to.

  227. 227.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @redshirt: Also, I don’t feel the need to take someone seriously whose response to disagreement is to launch personal attacks. Also, as I noted above, in the areas where I am competent to judge, mclaren’s statements are suspect.

  228. 228.

    sm*t cl*de

    Apart from sending a small prayer to Sekhmet, Goddess of Consequences

    Pro-tip: Sekhmet’s wrath can be evaded by offering her a bowl of red wine, which she knocks back believing it to be human blood, and after a few drinkies she has forgotten all about the original issue.

  230. 230.

    Thoughtful Today

    …

    Sometimes it’s amazing how often lawyers and even judges expect others to believe in fictions.

  231. 231.

    eemom

    @redshirt:

    Just FTR, mclaren’s a him. Google mclaren, balloon juice, McArdle and “tap that ass” if you don’t believe me.

    Jussayinzall. My gender has enough problems already.

  236. 236.

    Unsympathetic

    So.. he bets that the drug is in limited-enough use that nobody else will produce another generic equivalent – and by controlling distribution, he also made it harder to produce a competing generic since you must establish equivalence to get approval for it.

    Supply restrictions of this sort take place when they are intended to constrain market access and, by definition if there are no alternative sources, the party doing it has market power.. That’s a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

    He’s done it before with other drugs – this isn’t the first time.

    He deserves to be taken down. Hard.

  237. 237.

    Sherparick

    @Archon: Dean Baker at CEPR has explained how such a system would work, and also shows how the negative effects of the current system (embodied in this piece of human scum going by the name Shkreli) of rent seeking, price gouging, and corruption. cepr.net/publications/reports/financing-drug-research-what-are-the-issues

    However, the need for some price regulation of drugs for rare diseases still exists since the drugs are sold at low volume are not likely to attract generic competitors. The drug that Shkreli is selling, “Daraprim is used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease that especially affects people with weakened immune systems, such as those with AIDS ” is out of patent, but only one company (now owned by Shkreli) makes the drug and low volume means other drug companies are unlikely to make the investment to create a production facility for it. So it is a practical monopoly. And there are lots of other drugs like this now (also, the consolidation of Drug companies, as well as so many other industries, and the consequential rent seeking and decline of competition is a reminder of Judge Robert Bork’s pernicious legacy in anti-trust has been one of the lasting and most destructive legacies of the Conservative Political/Legal movement.) usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/09/23/turing-pharmaceuticals-ceo-martin-shkreli-will-lower-pr…

Comments are closed.