Company raises drug price by over 5,000 percent
If you need Daraprim—a drug that treats an infection caused by parasites and prevents malaria and toxoplasmosis—you used to be able to pay $13.50 a tablet. Now, it costs $750 a tablet.
That’s a price increase of 5,455 percent.
The drug was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start up run by Martin Shkreli who was a hedge fund manager, and its price was immediately raised, the New York Times reports.
This change sparked protests by infectious disease specialists, who say, according to the Times, that the 62-year-old drug is a standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.
This isn’t the first instance of a dramatic price increase, but though some increased are caused by drug shortages, others are a strategic business move. Pharmaceutical companies are buying old or neglected drugs, some of them generic, and hiking up the price tag by making them a “specialty drug,’’ according to the Times.
Shkreli said that Daraprim is so rarely used that the price raise wouldn’t affect the health system, according to the Times, and would actually allow Turing to use the money towards developing better treatments for toxoplasmosis.
“This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business,’’ Mr. Shkreli told the Times.
Read the full Times story here.
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