EP02: The Cure Heist - How Drugs Get Priced
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EP02: The Cure Heist - How Drugs Get Priced
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Narrated by:
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Summary
In 2015, Martin Shkreli raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 overnight. Same molecule. Same factory. Same patient population. The only thing that changed was who owned the company. The healthcare industry called it an outlier. The architecture says otherwise.
Markus Grant maps the system that lets one company buy an old drug and 50x the price the next morning. Pharmacy benefit managers. Patent extensions. Citizen petitions filed by the same companies that wrote the patents. Both parties take the money. Different mascots.
Key receipts:
- $13.50 to $750: Daraprim price jump (Turing Pharmaceuticals, 2015)
- 0%: change in molecular structure during the price hike
- 75%: of insulin market controlled by 3 companies (Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi)
- $1.4B: amount Big Pharma spent on lobbying in 2024 (OpenSecrets)
Receipts and case file: theranter.com/case-file/episode-2
Daily writing: newsletter.theranter.com
Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@TheRanterOfficial