It turns out Martin Shkreli doesn’t even deserve points for originality. I thought that was the one thing that could be said in favor of the hedge fund manager and pharmaceuticals CEO when news broke that he’d bought the right to manufacture the drug Daraprim—then jacked the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
The Times reports that in 2015 alone, “Valeant raised prices on its brand-name drugs an average of 66 percent, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis, about five times as much as its closest industry peers.” It’s been rewarded for its efforts as “one of Wall Street’s most popular health stocks.” And the head of the company, J. Michael Pearson, is now a billionaire.
I haven’t needed Vitamin K since my transplant a year and a half ago. But I called CVS to find out what my bottle of Mephyton would cost me now.
