$750 per pill
It’s not nice to rejoice in a misfortune that befalls someone else, but sometimes the misfortune fits the apparent character of the someone else in question so well that…
…well I won’t rejoice but I’ll just quietly point out.
Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager who has been widely criticized for drug price gouging, was arrested Thursday morning by the federal authorities.
The investigation, in which Mr. Shkreli has been charged with securities fraud, is related to his time as a hedge fund manager and running the biopharmaceutical company Retrophin — not the price-gouging controversy that has swirled around him.
Different thing, and yet so similar at its core.
Mr. Shkreli, 32, is now chief executive and founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals, which has drawn scrutiny for acquiring a decades-old drug and raising the price of it overnight to $750 a pill, from $13.50. In a recent interview with The New York Times, he acknowledged the regulatory and criminal investigations into claims of wrongdoing at hedge funds he once controlled as well as at Retrophin, but was dismissive of their importance.
But the feds weren’t so dismissive.
At first I thought this post was going to be about him having a terminal disease or something. I don’t think it’s not-nice to be pleased that a scumbag has been arrested for involvement in scumbaggery. That’s comeuppance, not misfortune.
Agreed, the ‘misfortune’ was entirely engineered by his own corruption.
Also called “justice”. I actually think we shouldn’t lose our ability to appreciate justice. And to know when a punishment is unjust for the crime, of course, but this is not such a case.
It’s justice regarding his time as a hedge fund manager, not justice regarding his price gouging. He screwed consumers, but nothing was done until he screwed Wall Street. It feels to me like nailing Dillinger for tax evasion. Justice in this case would be a massive increase in the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, making (among many other things) such price gouging illegal, and perhaps naming the bill after this guy.