On the twenty-second of September two thousand and fifteen a critical life saving drug got marked up in price %5000 overnight for the only reason that a greedy millionaire Martin Shkreli thought needs more money. this is what happened to the pill Daraprim that people with weakened immune systems such as aids patients need. the pills were originally $13.50 per pill but are now $750 a pill, put in simple terms most of the American population won’t be able to afford their vital medication overnight.

Andy manning is an unfortunate example, he had a run in with a girl when he was only 20. 5 years later he is diagnosed with aids earning only minimum wage and unable to have health insurance he had to pay for diaprim himself. before the price change he could scrape by, but now he left in the dark and now the future doesn’t look bright for him.

man martin Shkreli is an investor and the founder and CEO of Turing pharmaceuticals and in september of 2015 he made the executive decision to purchase the manufacturing rights for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim after seeing that he could take advantage of the poor victims that are dependent on these drugs.

but Martin Shkreli and his wonder drug isn’t the only one rising the prices of his pharmaceuticals the prices of drugs have increased over all. the drug deflazacort a steroid that is used to help kids with a condition called Duchenne muscular Dystrophy the Canadian price for this drug is from $2000-$3000 and is now $89,000 and again before that AMAG released a drug called Makena with the price of $1,500 used to prevent preterm birth and even though a similar drug that works exactly the same for $20 and can be brought on any corner drug store it worked AMAG pharmacies are now booking $93 million in the third quarter of last year  and then the price of EpiPens increased by %580 meaning that people with life threatening allergy can’t afford the tools that will keep them alive

iaprim gets benefits of the laws that congress passed to encourage drug companies to research and cure new sickness the legal benefits are that you get 7 year monopoly with the orphan drug Act and you get a voucher that gives you priority in the drug review process. this a process every new pharmaceutical goes through before it can be used by the American population. so as you can imagine these are pretty valuable

the problem with all these issues is that it’s not OK the pricing is crazy, yes the Turing company should add extra cost to the price of their drug for the research and development costs but even $50,000 a year per patient is far-fetched and those priority tickets could be worth hundreds of thousands. so how do we fix it?

first of all stop patient assistance co pay cards, these  cards are given to customers to reduce out-of-pocket expenses which sounds like a good thing but really its just to get people to buy the higher cost branded drugs.

then stop the pay to delay procedures when a drugs patent is about to run out the drug company pays competitive company’s to not make a generic version drug that will cost less so they can continue to charge the outrages price for the drugs.

then ban direct to consumer advertising. DCA as its more commonly referred too is pharmaceutical advertisements on the media professionals are against them because they falsify the effects of there drugs with “blue sky and old people suddenly having the ability to jump around did you know that drug company’s spend almost as much as they do on research and development? they do this because it works. even the American medical association support banning DCA’s

so, in conclusion, the medical market prices are rising drastically but nothing is changing so we need to ban DCA stop pay to delay and then we can have a pharmaceutical market witch will allow low income citizen to get the medication to  survive.

 

 

 

Join the conversation! 1 Comment

  1. Hi Finn,

    I’d like to offer you a short 20 minute re-submission for this piece to resolve two areas of concern. 1) Your (under)use of capitalisation at the beginnings of paragraphs and sentences. 2) Some of your statements need formalisation and clarification in order to suit the needs of a written article.

    When can you come in to have a look at it?

    CW

    Reply

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