Okay, I'll bite. Why do you think he's human garbage? You felt strongly enough to reply, maybe you can muster the effort to explain why you think that?
A USD 750 list price for a drug does NOT result in most people paying the list price. Most people get it via insurance, insurance companies pay a negotiated rate and you pay the copay (frequently higher than what the insurance company actually pays). Retrophin isn't a widely used drug so the effect on overall premiums was also tiny. His company literally offered the drug for free to anyone who for whom insurance didn't pay for it and who couldn't afford it. He also had a publicly stated business plan whereby he would use profits from Retrophin to invest in research into similar drugs which pharmaceutical companies have not been doing since Retrophin had been losing money.
Given the byzantine manner in which payments are actually made in the US, there simply isn't any other way to price an orphan drug, i.e. a drug that very few people actually need. The only way to make a business that produces life-and-death drugs needed by very few people sustainable is to price the drug very high due to very high fixed regulatory costs per drug manufactured. If you want to change this, it needs legislation and FDA reform. Demonizing businesses that raise prices to ensure they make a reasonable profit, will only result in drugs that are life-and-death for a small number of people either getting taken off the market or not coming to the market in the first place.
What's FAR more concerning is things like the recent increases in pricing for things like the Epi-Pen. Prices were raised 10x but also the expiration date on Epi-Pens is artificially short, so hospitals, schools etc are forced to throw away perfectly usable Epi-Pens for no good reason. Nobody talks about that because that price hike was by order of a senator's daughter. Shrekili just happens to be a bit of a PR nincompoop.
What we really need is a populace that thinks carefully and independently and a press that actually spends money on investigative reporting instead of relying on what politicians tell them to report, which helps their bottom line since it's much cheaper.
Obtaining a license just to increase a drug's price from $13.50 to $750 for no apparent reason other than greed isn't enough for you?
This case isn't about that. Are you suggesting we should convict and punish people on trial for one crime because we don't like their past activities and behaviors? Even if those other behaviors were illegal, they should be considered during a separate trial that's actually pertaining to them.
That wasn't your question, was it? You asked why he's human garbage, I explained why. I wasn't defending or attacking this case, I was explaining why some think he is human garbage.
> Nowhere was I (or you) saying anything about this case.
Your specific words in your original response were "He's human garbage, let him rot." That response was to me saying I think the details of the case lead me to believe that I think he should a light sentence.
You very specifically noted through that euphemism that you think he shouldn't get a light sentence in this case because he's human garbage.
Edit: Sorry. That was someone else. I was specifically asking in context, but that wasn't you originally. Mea Culpa. Leaving it here with this note so people that saw it previously can see me retraction.
No. It was about fraud.
Why should we NOT punish people for fraud?
The ways that question are answered in this thread prove your assertion is false. This case IS about that, because without that, he'd just be one more pennyless felon.
Who said he shouldn't be punished? I simply stated that since he made restitution prior to charges being brought, perhaps that should factor into sentencing. I don't know who you're arguing against, or what you're really arguing, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I've been talking about.
Restitution isn't the only reason for punishment.
> I don't know who you're arguing against, or what you're really arguing
That he's clearly unapologetic and simply got lucky, and that this should factor into sentencing.
This is how society's immune system functions.
I also see a distinction between Capone and Shkreli in that Capone's other actions which may have influenced his trial were myriad illegal activities that they couldn't get evidence for. Shkreli is just believed to be an asshole.
The justice system is meant to punish specific crimes, which it did done in both cases, but that doesn't prohibit you as a human to see it as karmic justice, for someone being a garbage human, wether legally or illegally.
Normally, no (which I said explicitly in another comment here). In this case, the activities are linked. There's no need to evade taxes if your income isn't illegal.
Even so, I don't subscribe to the argument that it's entirely a good thing that we prosecuted Capone for tax evasion. We were unable to prove the actual criminal activities, so we instead looked at the fruits of those activities and used that.
Another way to look at it is that the justice system completely failed initially. We couldn't build a case for the major crimes, but we could for the lesser crimes. He was still guilty of both (this is of course assuming his guilt).
In Shkreli's case, we failed to prosecute originally because it's not a crime. The current case isn't related in the same way, and linking them and punishing in the latter because of people's perception of the former is akin to levying a harsher sentence on someone because of their interracial marriage in a region and time when that was legal but frowned upon. Social pressure unrelated to the issue at hand should not be relevant in court. Even if it's related to the issue at hand in the case, it should be restricted to sentencing (where it likely can't be removed anyway).
And it's not like anyone was hurt. Overall, insurers ended up paying a bit more (drugs are only 10-15% of US health care costs, and very few people need Daraprim). Big deal. If more people did this, then the system would get this issue addressed, maybe.
On top of that, he said he was investing the profits into researching better drugs, though of course that's not a requirement.
If you want to make a profit and drink champagne on yachts that's totally fine, just don't go around telling everyone that you're pouring those profits back into research.
At some point if your system is so terribly busted and no one is fixing it, eh, maybe you lose the right to hate people abusing it. Or maybe his wit and charisma is making me blind to the issue here.
I'm getting increasingly annoyed at the culture of praising exploiters of the system instead of promoting constructive players (who are less profitable, ie less sexy). I understand that the contrarian view to "The Man" is the easiest one to take, even if I think the identified "Man" is the diametrical opposite.
My point is fairness and accusations of greed cut both ways, if fairness was truly the concern of the poster he would also cut his standard of living in order to benefit those much worse off than him. As he more than likely does not his argument is not "let's increase fairness" but rather "people in my class and I deserve more" and that's the same argument the people raising the drug prices are making.