Cost of Medications

A couple months ago, the web had an outcry against a pharmaceutical company that raised the price of an antiparasitic drug outrageously. A start-up acquired rights to this old drug and immediately increased the cost by over 50 times. The whole thing felt quite ridiculous, and yet so believable. To those of us who've been in medicine for a while, this is not a new occurrence; I've seen half a dozen drugs increase in price when another company acquired rights to an old medication. I find it appalling.

The problem is that not everyone's interests are aligned. A company will try to maximize financial gain at the expense of patients. Their responsibility is to their shareholders or angel investors or employees. This may be acceptable in other markets, but when someone tries to take principles gleaned from tech companies or entrepreneurial startups and applies it to established medical systems, he might be biting off more than he can chew. We have all learned to put up with the cost of innovation; each time a new chemotherapeutic or hepatitis drug is released, there is some clamor about the cost, but we aren't trying to shame the company. Here, though, a company is capitalizing on an existing treatment, and that, I think, is crossing the line. I am not against trying to shake up a system - indeed, that's how we root out inefficiencies. But it seems morally indefensible to acquire an antimicrobial and then raise its prices prohibitively. Even if insurance companies will cough up the money for it, ultimately, it's contributing to the black hole of health care costs.

In health care, I believe companies must draw some lines on what is morally permissible. Health care workers are on the patient's side. We do what we think is best for them. We cannot allow the other factors - pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies - badger us into forgetting who we serve.