The drug in question has been in use since 1952. There is no monopoly with state funds.

The problem is that any competitor that might enter the market will only be able to sell at about $40/vial while the current price is $40,000/vial due to the monopoly. The manufacturer already bought the rights to a low cost synthetic analog and shelved it. The invisible hand is pinned to a desk with a dagger through it's palm.

This case screams for government intervention. Sitting in the pumpkin patch sure that our sincerity will surely bring the Great Pumpkin^W^W Invisible Hand THIS time simply isn't working.

So....numbers don't count, but liars do?
Seems we have a winner today
That is the DUMBEST thing I will read this day

Nothing will change until - AND I DON'T ADVOCATE THIS! - big rapacious pharma corporations start seeing their execs being wacked. It's bound to happen sooner or later. Some guy knows there's a medicine that will save his daughter's life, but now it's tens of thousands of dollars a month. It was $40 last month. He snaps. It's gonna happen, sooner or later.

"even more resource usage"? okay, fair enough, let's denominate it in actual dollars as opposed to the arbitrary "you get 100 hours on whatever Hutter had lying around".

Really? The average Silicon Valley "coder" makes $180,000 a year. Get a grip kid. Go see how the rest of the world lives.

Couldn't find the cost.

https://www.ndrugs.com/?s=acth...

It sounds like they could fly the patient to a country with an appropriate acthar substitute and pocket the difference while waiting for a resolution.

If there are no local options for rare disorders, the option to go to where treatment is available is the next best thing (regardless of who's dime its on).

Russia is promoting the unelectable socialist also.
So give it up on the idea the voters can fix this

Considering that in Catholic countries you have hundreds of Saints to worship and every few years one more pops up.

I think of the relations future humans will have to future machines more like the relations horses had to humans in the 19th century. They were useful, and taken care of while they were.

Actually, that would change the price. If the price could be spread out enough that no single individual cares enough to protest, the price can be jacked up even more.

Like phantomfive, you are to smart for this world.

To add to your points: hell did not exist in early Christianity. Hell comes from the north word Hel, meaning the frozen underworld the unworthy were condemed to, and the name of the godess to rule over them. Stupid christians in their attempt to rule everyone incorporated Hel/hell into their Bible during christioning and proselytizing.

Funny is that they mix many mythical figures into being Satan, such as Lucifer. And interesting is that Lucifer is mosttly mistranslated all over the world as "light bearer". However I just figured that the wikipedia article about that name is now very accurate: Light bringer. The myth about Prometheus. The morning star before it was called Venus.

While I believe most relgions somehow evolved naturally, Christianity and Islam are completely artificial mind constructs. Islam more than Christianity.

See above, Hel was a frozen underworld for the dead, now it is a fire place ... which is probably inspired by the burning bush where "god" was found, which most likely was a natural burning oil spring ... if it ever existed.

http://www.epilepsyaustralia.n...

Adrenocorticotropic Hormone Acthar, Synacthen

Its available in Australia

Yup, IQ isn't the whole story with Gifted, usually it's just the start. Many people don't get that. Happy things eventually worked out for you both.

(And thanks.)

Maybe they didn't make enough money to offset $500M that it cost to bring this drug to the market? Maybe patent is running out? Not to justify this, but there could be many reasons why they raised the price so much. Given that the end customer pretty much never pays the full cost, what do you propose they do? Never bring it to market in the first place? Lose a couple hundred million dollars?

There's no "false dilemma". Which politicians talk about a prosperous society that benefits us all? Which politicians talk instead about getting even with "billionaires"?

If you want to claim "false dilemma", then you have to choose to help everyone and stop trying to tear down one side.

> it is not like there aren't any generics

Are you sure? The FDA allows generic manufacturers to pay all the others to NOT produce a drug. This is when they go up thousands of percents.

They also make it illegal to import 5c pills to protect the $320 profits on pills of the companies they plan to work for in the future. It's corrupt as hell and people are dying so bureaucrats can get sweet jobs.

Also, the software winning the past 100MB contest has not seen widespread use for lossless compression outside this contest. So it is already so much more optimized for size than for resource usage, that allowing for even more resource usage would probably just result in winners that are of even less generic applicability.

There might be an excluded middle somewhere there....I mean, at least our current president out to be considered.

Georgia is a southern state full of rednecks and deplorables. You really sure you want to chalk yourself up on their side?

If there's any justice, he'll get a parasite or HIV but the prison won't provide him with is drug Daraprim because it's too expensive. Just kidding, I wouldn't wish illness on anyone, hopefully he'll just get shanked -- wait, dammit!

It wouldn't change the price, but it would manage the cost by spreading it out over a bigger random distribution of people. That's why I admitted it was off topic at the start of my post.

Still, a larger insurance company can negotiate better prices than retail because refusing to cover it at all would be a big loss to the drug company.

Yes, for example you could fund another competition that better fits your preference of what hardware should be thrown at the topic.

What did not work is that you did not convince the ones running this competition that they should adopt your favorized rules.

In debates of Democratic candidates for president, several of the candidates have said that the medical system in the U.S. needs thorough revision.

I agree with that. One of the many, many problems: Drugs in the U.S. are allowed to have more than one name!!! See Overview of Generic Drugs and Drug Naming.

Another article: Multiple Brand Names for the Same Generic Drug Can Cause Confusion.

of reading a billion characters? Youâ(TM)re not going to remember or use nearly all of it. This goes along with reading books all the time, I remember reading some article about how Bill Gates or the like was complaining he is not going to read all of the books he wants simply because he does not have the time, and he is currently reading like 5-10 a week. Why?

Re-insurance covers much of that and is probably a lot cheaper than outsourcing insurance.

It used to cost $40 a vial and they raised to $39,000. Your argument doesn't make sense in light of the original price and subsequent increase. This is price gouging pure and simple, like that dick Martin Shkreli did with Daraprim -- raising the price 5,400 percent (originally cost $13.50 a pill, now it costs $750 a pill).

Is anyone still actually watching The Simpsons anymore?

I'm not disagreeing with you. Just pointing out the facts. Getting a generic approved is next to impossible because big pharma throws down the oil slick and up the smoke screen. Then they patent isomers which they may sit on. Then they take the little guys to court and bankrupt them when there was no case to begin with. It goes on and on and on.

Last I heard, Martin Shkreli continued to operate his drug mafia from prison.

History as a lesson, some things never change. You try to regulate something, and you make it worse because the mob sidesteps the regulations or they're the ones writing them.

It's a sense of the scale of information. More importantly, it sets a bar for "as good as a human can get"

Somewhat unusually, the drug is only available in the US, so the usual cost comparison with e.g. UK NHS is not possible.

The urge to ostracize males in the lower quartile is strong in humans and takes many forms. We know in our bones that they're unfit people must be cast out, but we do not know why.

From the wikipedia article:

"Mallinckrodt acquired the US rights to the animal-derived form via its acquisition of Questcor Pharmaceuticals in 2014.[32] When Questcor acquired the drug in 2001 it sold for $40 a vial; within a year of the acquisition Questcor raised the price of the drug to $1,500 per vial and to $28,000 by 2013.[33][34]"

"The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from five states sued Mallinckrodt for anti-competitive behavior with regard to the acquisition of Synacthen Depot and the monopolistic pricing of Acthar, and in January 2017 the company settled, agreeing to pay $100 million and to license Synacthen Depot to a competitor.[32] According to Kaiser Health News, Mallinckrodt responded by increasing its Congressional lobbying to $610,000, and its contributions to Congress members to $44,000, in the first quarter of 2017.[37]"

That's all we need to know.

It's fucking unbelievable how FDA and FTC allow one company acquire the rights for a drug manufacture, or buy off other companies, thus becoming a monopolist on the market. This is at the same time when we can't just import drugs from other countries.