Posted by Michael Wonder on 13 Sep 2018
The ghost of Martin Shkreli still haunts drug prices
13 September 2018 - A drug maker's eye-popping price hike is a reminder of how hard it is to curb such behaviour.
It’s Shkreli redux.
The Financial Times reported Tuesday that a small Missouri drug maker recently raised the price of a 60-year-old antibiotic by more than 400%, in a move reminiscent of hedge-fund bad boy Martin Shkreli. When Shkreli jacked up the price of a decades-old, life-saving medicine, he infamously gloated about it. In the latest case, Nostrum Laboratories CEO Nirmal Mulye didn’t exactly gloat, but he did offer a full-throated defence of his actions, telling the Financial Times that there is a “moral requirement to make money where you can … to sell the product for the highest price.”
