There’s an entity in the pharmaceutical industry that’s even more evil than the infamous Martin Shkreli, who jacked up the price of Daraprim by 5,000% from $13.50 to $750 per pill, and its name is Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. In 2001, its subsidiary Questcor bought the rights to H.P. Acthar Gel, which is a drug that treats a very rare kind of epilepsy called infantile spasms. Since then, the price skyrocketed from $50 a vial to a whopping $34,000.
Yup. Wait! There’s more. In a 2012 article about the suspiciously rising cost of Acthar, Questcor’s then-CEO explains what’s behind it. He told the New York Times:
“We have this drug at a very high price right now because, really, our principal market is infantile spasms,” Don M. Bailey, Questcor’s chief executive, told analysts in 2009. “And we only have about 800 patients a year. It’s a very, very small — tiny — market.”
Oh no! How horrible! This potentially lethal disease only affects 800 infants a year! Don’t you hate it when sick babies don’t do their part to increase company profits?
Mr. Bailey told the Times that they couldn’t lower the price of Acthar even if they wanted to. “We could lower the price and make less money and then we would be sued by our shareholders.”
See? Their hands were tied! The threat of the vague possibility of shareholders suing them forced them to keep raking in the dough!
Fortunately, their greed did not go unnoticed. The Federal Trade Commission slammed the company with a $100 million fine for “anti-competitive practices” — the complaint against Mallinckrodt says they worked to sabotage efforts to bring similar drugs into the American market while making sure Acthar’s price kept climbing.
But don’t you dare think that this company believes they committed any wrongdoing. As they say in their press release:
”[W]e continue to strongly disagree with allegations outlined in the FTC's complaint, believing that key claims are unsupported and even contradicted by scientific data and market facts, and appear to be inconsistent with the views of the FDA . Removing the distraction of litigation enables us to focus on advancing our increasingly diversified portfolio of medicines for the benefit of patients.”
HA! If anyone believes that they care about patients, I have something really expensive and non-existent to sell you (that’s totally how the saying goes, right?).
If your blood pressure hasn’t risen enough, just think about pharmaceutical companies under Trump. Considering how the GOP has been attacking health care like a pack of starving wolves thrown a piece of meat, I’m sure this type of despicable behavior won’t be hard to come by.
Don M. Bailey is no longer the CEO at Questcor. I wonder where he is now? With our luck, Trump hired him to create the “replacement” for Obamacare.