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Re:Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lea... by throwaway2048 on Sunday October 23, 2016 @02:19PM (#12774668)
this smells a lot like apologetics. You can come up with an infinite amount of similar reasons for any complex process. Saying it isn't enough, actual basis/numbers are required to support an argument.

The precision required for a small batch of custom ASIC chips greatly exceeds that of a completely standard and easily created compound, for example. Yet you can still get them for around less than $100 a chip even with relatively small orders (say single wafer, maybe 200 chips), if the chip itself is relatively simple. Anyone even remotely familiar with the process can come up with a massive laundry list of impressive sounding constraints and similar that could "justify" them costing $10000 a chip. After all, its literally the most precise form of manufacturing human kind is capable of, it took decades of research, and we are working with structures that are only a few dozen atoms wide, the factories ALONE cost billions of dollars to build, and all this is being delivered, 100% custom to you, surely thats worth a kings ransom!

Both industries are pretty much the definition of barrier to entry, with absolutely titanic initial investment required. The difference is one industry is relatively competitive, while the other is full of drug-monopolies that you either pay, or you die.

Re:Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lea... by ceterum_censeo on Sunday October 23, 2016 @03:39PM (#12775060)
> this smells a lot like apologetics.

That's hardly my intention here, and frankly, I find the accusation both insulting and offensive.

As with many (most?) pharmaceuticals, the cost of the active ingredient doesn't play a large role in the ultimate price. This is a prescription injectable with a volume of 200–300 units per year. It will need to be produced under GMP, and since the volume is minuscule, it's going to be produced using an expensive batch process. Setup/teardown, time, testing, packaging and logistics are going to dominate the per unit cost. It's really, really difficult to predict what the cost would be without more research, but somewhere between the original $950 and the current $27k wouldn't surprise me less than either extreme. (Keep in mind these aren't the ASP)

Portraying the entire pharmaceutical industry as one of comfortable monopolies based on the actions of some unlikeable bad actors isn't fair: the majority of the industry defines "cut throat".

Re:Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lea... by x0x0 on Sunday October 23, 2016 @11:14PM (#12776607)
The drug was sold for decades at 1/28th the current price. Do you believe they were losing money hand over fist?

Also, this seems like something a compounding pharmacy could make.