Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway84742 | Hacker News Reader

He didn’t “extort sick poor people”, he extorted insurance companies. If you couldn’t afford his drugs, he was offering them for free.

View on HN

You do realize that insurance companies have to charge people more money than they spend in order to be profitable, right? Exorbitant drug costs is just another one of the factors that price poor people out of insurance, which is actually a much worse outcome than simply denying access to that specific drug.

The price of the drugs is amortized over everyone with insurance. The drug in question has a total potential audience of around 2000 people in the United States, if I remember correctly, so that means the cost of the treatment will be spread very widely.

Also, the drug he raised the price on was a horrible 50-year-old drug. Shkreli raised the price with the explicit aim of getting funds to research a new drug, with less terrible side-effects.

Never mind the fact that he offered the drug for free to those in that 2000 group of people that couldn't afford it. People should read into why he really went to jail. The toxoplasmosis drug has very little to do with it and a lot of companies do the same with little repercussion.

The drug he was selling is used to treat a pretty rare disease, so it made little to no effect on the overall cost of insurance. And even at a higher price it was a good deal to insurance companies who would have to spend massively more if this drug wasn’t available at all.

Insurance premiums are pricing more and more people out of the market and that trend is driven by this sort of behavior.

I'm glad that Shkreli felt obligated to help the people who could directly attribute their suffering to him, but he's still a jerk who extorts sick people.

So do Health Care insurance companies. People don't realize how broken that system is until they or someone they know gets really sick.

Alternatively, life is sometimes a sad story, and once it happens to someone they know people start looking for systems to blame.

He played a zero sum game where he profited by imposing an incremental tax on the buyers of health insurance, the common public.

And schools, and other places which, by law, were required to have Epi-pens on hand.

Schools waste disgusting amounts of taxpayer money overpaying for things all the time. What’s a couple more dollars to the books?

I think you are confused, Shkreli's company owned retrophin, the toxoplasmosis drug, not epi-pen's.

And as the parent commenter said, he was charging insurance companies alone, and claimed the drug was only used by a few hundred people.

I suspect that will be an unpopular fact although true.

He was made an example of by Insurance companies and politicians. You have to remember Shkreli is very connected on Wall St and can call Soros et al friends.

I am of the opinion that the Judge was also biased in this case. She had a disdain for him from the beginning.

Junk away ...LOL....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com