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Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

Another day, another clear example of the "free" market ossifying into monopoly absent effective government regulation, while common people suffer.

I yearn for the day that humanity reaches Star Trek ideals, and looks back on people like the Milan CEO the way we regard magnanimous tyrants and bloodthirsty war criminals.

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This market is not free at all. There is a reason that Mylan has been the only company offering this product. The FDA has been slow to approve additional devices in this market. Mylan also created this market by lobbying congress to give money to schools to stock them with EpiPen's. When Mylan was testifying before congress the gentleman from the FDA refused to give any insight as to when additional manufactures might be given permission to manufacture competitors or provide any insight into the delay.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/01/49223579...

https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Testimony/ucm521839.htm

The same government that protects patents and prevents you from buying from overseas suppliers. I buy all my prescription meds direct from India where I pay them with bitcoin. It's the exact same stuff and way cheaper.

Are you sure it's the exact same? There have been studies looking at quality/purity of medications manufactured in different countries, and they don't all have high standards of purity.

I do the same and the meds I've received certainly work as evidenced by my ability to breathe currently.

3 month supply costs less than one months co-pay.

This is the beauty and the beast of "Free markets". In most cases, you get what free markets boast about - more competition, reduced pricing, better service.

If you were to look at the statistics, these would either be edge cases or outliers when considering the overwhelming evidence that in most cases, free markets are far better than having burdensome government regulations.

It's funny to hear people complain about how bad the free market system is in this case, but are also crying about employment immigration issues and how we can't get MORE H1-B's visa's, and why SV companies can't bring in more highly skilled candidates from other countries.

It cuts both ways. There is a median in there. Heavily regulated or totally free markets never work, we need to find a balance.

EpiPen prices occur in a heavily regulated market. Mylan has a patent on the mechanism they sell (no generics from other companies) and there are all sorts of regulations surrounding the production of any drug offered for sale in the US.

The current state of EpiPen is a direct result of free will of the original inventor and the company he worked for when he developed it. The company which is currently an "evil monopolist" acquired the rights to it as result of free-market, mutually beneficial transactions. Yes, they offer the tech for a lot of money - but you are _free_ not to purchase it and use older medicine instead.

The problem with your type of logic is illustrated best not by the complicated reality, but (as usual with philosophical problems) a corner case. Imagine that I invent a fantastic new medicine - and being an evil genius, leave it in my lab, never announcing it to the world, knowing perfectly well that millions of people around the world could be saved if I did.

In your logic, this absence of action makes me evil - although these poor sufferers would suffer just the same if I didn't invent this new medicine to begin with. The same is true for EpiPen: it's their inaction you condemn, not action.

The medical industry is not making the world a worse place through it's actions; it just isn't doing it a better place to an extent that you would want them to.

> The same is true for EpiPen: it's their inaction you condemn, not action.

Your claim is factually incorrect. The issue here is specific, purposeful, anticompetitive behavior.

In your example I wouldn't go so far as to say you would be evil, perhaps just morally bankrupt or at the very least lacking in empathy.

You have someone like Jonas Salk who basically fit your example perfectly, except he decided to share his invention with the world instead of hiding it away as per your example.

You're free to not share your cure with the world, no one could force you, but I would question the motivations of someone who chose not to.

Mylan bought it after someone came up with a minor improvement to the needle cap and it could be marketed under a patent.

The ridiculous price has little to do with the original inventor.

A not stupid regulatory system would evaluate the value of the improvement to the market (likely hugely negative in this case). The idea wouldn't be to deny the company the right to the patent, it would be to deny regulatory approval for the patented version of the device.

(the argument being that decreased access to the patented device costs more than the benefit provided by the minor safety improvements it offers).

When you got a regulatory system that evaluates value, you got a complex, corruption and bug prone system.

I'd take my systems stupid and simple, please.

A simple implementation would force them to market the new pen under a different name.

They would of course argue that this confuses the marketplace. But they are sitting there exploiting the confused marketplace, so not much of an argument to be made along those lines.

There used to be a time when the monopolist would not raise price to whatever they could ge away with. Daraprim was very affordable for 50 years until Shkreli bought out the manufacturer, the same with Epipens, until Mylan bought the product from Merck KGA. One could easily find more examples if one went looking.

Something changed in ths mid-90s. Neoliberalism became salonfähig, or something.

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