“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price on a drug to treat infections in AIDS patients by 5,000%, from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill thus shining a global spotlight on the United States’ precarious healthcare market. Shkreli has become the ogre of healthcare. Yet other companies have jacked up prices just as much as Shkreli did, with no consequences other than soaring stock prices.
In September of 2016, the makers of the Epipen (The Epi-pen is only the latest in a long string of shocking and reprehensible price hikes in the pharmaceutical industry In 2015, Martin Shkreli, then CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, became the “most hated man in America” when he purchased the antiparasitic drug, Daraprim, and raised the price, literally overnight, from $13.50 per pill to a visceral reaction-inducing $750 per pill. Even before Shkreli’s dastardly deed, pharmaceutical manufacturers have been playing fast and loose with drug prices for years. Januvia, the diabetes pill manufactured by Merck & Co., has more than doubled in price since it’s introduction to the market just ten years ago. Gleevec, a cancer treatment manufactured by Novartis AG, was priced at $32,000 in 2001 now costs a …show more content…
Greber. In Greber, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit established the “one purpose” test. Under the “one purpose” test, “if one purpose of the payment was to induce future referrals, the Medicare statute has been violated.” In U.S. v. Bay State Ambulance and Hospital Rental, Inc., the First Circuit stopped short of explicitly adopting the “one purpose” test, instead instructing the jury that the “primary purpose” must be improper in order to obtain a conviction under the Anti-Kickback Statute. As of 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet directly addressed the scope of the Anti-Kickback
In September of 2016, the makers of the Epipen (The Epi-pen is only the latest in a long string of shocking and reprehensible price hikes in the pharmaceutical industry In 2015, Martin Shkreli, then CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, became the “most hated man in America” when he purchased the antiparasitic drug, Daraprim, and raised the price, literally overnight, from $13.50 per pill to a visceral reaction-inducing $750 per pill. Even before Shkreli’s dastardly deed, pharmaceutical manufacturers have been playing fast and loose with drug prices for years. Januvia, the diabetes pill manufactured by Merck & Co., has more than doubled in price since it’s introduction to the market just ten years ago. Gleevec, a cancer treatment manufactured by Novartis AG, was priced at $32,000 in 2001 now costs a …show more content…
Greber. In Greber, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit established the “one purpose” test. Under the “one purpose” test, “if one purpose of the payment was to induce future referrals, the Medicare statute has been violated.” In U.S. v. Bay State Ambulance and Hospital Rental, Inc., the First Circuit stopped short of explicitly adopting the “one purpose” test, instead instructing the jury that the “primary purpose” must be improper in order to obtain a conviction under the Anti-Kickback Statute. As of 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet directly addressed the scope of the Anti-Kickback