Martin Shkreli pleads the Fifth, then tweets about 'imbeciles' in Congress

[Benton]

(02-05-2016, 02:16 PM)Au165 Wrote: Some of your comparisons don't hold water because they aren't in regards to saving someone's life...their actual life not quality of life. 

And — as I said — that's why there's never going to be an ethical line. Quality of life in terms of how much earning potential you have (college education, internet availability) does translate into health. Poverty is tied to a high number of cases of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other things that kill you.

On the other hand, you can argue that it' not directly so, which is also true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/18/the-government-is-spending-more-to-help-rich-seniors-than-poor-ones/

Quote: As for the surgery that is service that the cost can shift as the price to pay people qualified to perform it can go up.

It's an average. Naturally, that can go up and down. How does that change the fact the average markup is 1,000%?

Quote:The issue in this case, with this specific drug, is nothing changed other than a guy came in trying to milk it for as much possible as quickly as he can. When we allow things such as patents, then we also must have checks and balances to protect the consumer.

 
We do. Sort of. We have patent expirations in place so people can make generics of it. And there's the kicker. Some insurance plans won't accept generics, which is a legal loophople. As with anything, there's checks and balances, and there's guys smart enough to figure out ways around them.

Quote:Patents (especially in pharmaceuticals) are counter intuitive to free market philosophy because they prevent the competition that allows for the true value to be assigned to a good. If we eliminated patents I'd be okay with letting this guy charge whatever he wanted because competitors would come in and we would have stabilization, but since we already artificially manipulate free market then there must be checks in place to stop these things from happening.

If you don't have patents, you've got less incentive to create a drug. Why spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours developing something that the guy down the street is going to make for virtually no cost?