Reasons for Daraprim still costs USD 750 a pill

Since the news that Turing Pharmaceuticals had jacked up the price of the drug Daraprim by 5,000% broke in September, former CEO Martin Shkreli has become perhaps the most-hated public figure in America, resigned from his job and been arrested on civil and criminal securities fraud charges.

While much has changed in Shkreli’s life, when he testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday those who use Daraprim will be paying the exact same price they’ve paid for the last four months: $750 per pill. Fresh from drubbings in the press and presidential candidates, Shkreli said in late September that he would cut the cost of the drug, which cost $13.50 a pop before Turing acquired it and which many patients must take daily for years.

He didn’t say how much the price would be lowered, but it didn’t matter—he would swiftly renege on is promise. In late November, Turing announced discounts of up to 50% for hospitals—where only patients requiring hospitalization would benefit from the reduction—along with smaller, less costly bottles of the drug. The embattled biopharmaceutical company sought to portray its price hike as costly only to insurance companies and not consumers, according to documents.

The company also established patient assistance programs to take the focus away from what a 5,000% increase in price seemed likely to do to patient access, said the memo, which summarized more than 250,000 pages of Turing documents. But patients were still slapped with co-pays ranging from $1,000 to even more than $16,000, according to the memo. Access to the drug has also been impeded on the state level, where health departments—normally eligible for discounted Medicaid rates on drugs—have had difficulty gaining access, said Sean Dickson, manager of health care access at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors. And while hospitals can get discounted access to Daraprim, those terms are negotiated individually, and would only benefit patients getting initial treatment with the drug. 

Daraprim is used to treat parasitic infections and prevent a nervous system infection in those with HIV.

Turing Pharma CEO Martin Shkreli Arrested

Martin Shkreli, a boastful pharmaceutical executive who came under withering criticism for price gouging vital drugs, denied securities fraud charges on Thursday following an early morning arrest, and was freed on a $5 million bond. While the 32-year-old has earned a rare level of infamy for his brazenness in business and his personal life, what he was charged with had nothing to do with skyrocketing drug prices. He is accused of repeatedly losing money for investors and lying to them about it, illegally taking assets from one of his companies to pay off debtors in another.

In the federal indictment and a complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission, authorities say Shkreli began losing money and lying to investors from the time he began managing money. In his mid-20s, he got nine investors to place $3 million with him and at one point he had only $331. Securities fraud is hardly unheard of on Wall Streeet and the amounts involved here are nowhere near on the scale of Bernie Madoff. But Shkreli’s case has drawn such attention because of his defiant price-gouging and his own up-by-the-bootstraps history.

The son of immigrants from Albania and Croatia who did janitorial work and raised him and his brothers in working-class Brooklyn, Shkreli seemed at first to embody the American dream and then to mock it. After dropping out of an elite Manhattan high school, he worked as an intern for Jim Cramer’s hedge fund as a 17-year-old and quickly impressed with his ability to call stocks. He created hedge funds, taught himself biology and, after earning a BA at Baruch College in New York City, began hedge funds investing in biotech.

He became famous within a certain world but entered public consciousness after he raised the price more than 55-fold for Daraprim in September from $13.50 per pill to $750. It is the preferred treatment for a parasitic condition known as toxoplasmosis, which can be deadly for unborn babies and patients with compromised immune systems including those with HIV or cancer. His company, Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, bought the drug, moved it to a closed distribution system and instantly drove the price into the stratosphere. He drew shocked rebukes from Congress, doctors and presidential candidates, and brought public attention to the rising prices of older drugs. Donald Trump called Shkreli a “spoiled brat,” and the BBC dubbed him the “most hated man in America.” Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate, rejected a $2,700 campaign donation from him, directing it to an HIV clinic. A spokesman said the campaign would not keep money “from this poster boy for drug company greed.”

All the criticism seemed at first to have some impact and Shkreli said he would lower the price. Then he reneged. When Hillary Clinton tried one more time last month to get him to cut the cost, he dismissed her with the tweet “lol.” At a Forbes summit in New York this month, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, he said if he could have done it over, “I probably would have raised the price higher,” adding, “My investors expect me to maximize profits.”