The Senate dissects Martin Shkreli's scheme to grab a $1B windfall
Whatever else you may have to say about Martin Shkreli and his team at Turing, they did their homework.
They wanted to find a poorly performing orphan drug serving a small patient population that had a sole-source manufacturer to supply the market, so distribution could be carefully controlled. And Daraprim at Impax fit that bill perfectly.
Because a “classic closed distribution play” like Daraprim served a small patient population, they noted in emails and documents cited by the new Senate report on drug pricing, there weren’t enough people involved to generate an effective lobbying campaign that might greet a sudden price hike. Other generic manufacturers could be barred from getting their hands on the product, keeping competition at bay. And the price could be set where they wanted it, taking a drug with little annual revenue and creating an opportunity to make hundreds of millions of dollars in a quick windfall.
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