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Monday, April 27th, 2020

Pharmaceutical maker triples drug price after asking FDA for approval as COVID-19 treatment

Author:     Travis Gettys
Source:     Raw Story
Publication Date:     April 23, 2020
 Link: Pharmaceutical maker triples drug price after asking FDA for approval as COVID-19 treatment
Stephan:   The United States already pays many multiples more than any other country on earth for pharmaceuticals; the greed of the industry is legendary. I think this should be seen as just a particularly vile example of that greed, and a cautionary tale showing why we need to ditch the illness profit system and replace it with a real healthcare system. And be very clear, as Covid-19 reveals the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and technicians are not the source of this problem. All of this is about corporate greed. Greed is the besetting sin of America.

A pharmaceutical maker jacked up the cost of its only FDA-approved drug immediately after asking the federal government to expand its use as a coronavirus treatment.

Jaguar Health more than tripled the price of the antidiarrheal medication Mystesi shortly after asking the Food and Drug Administration to authorize emergency use for COVID-19 patients, reported Axios.

The list price of a 60-pill bottle of Mytesi was $668.52 going into this year, but on April 9 the company hiked the cost to $2,206.52.Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.

Jaguar Health had asked the FDA on March 21 to approve the drug, which is typically prescribed to HIV/AIDS patients who are on antiretroviral drugs, for coronavirus patients suffering from diarrhea associated with certain antiviral treatments.

The FDA denied the request April 7 for unspecified reasons, but Jaguar Health remains in discussions with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases about evaluating the drug’s effectiveness against the coronavirus.

The company’s CEO told Axios that Jaguar Health decided to raise the cost in December because it was losing […]

Read the Full Article

2 Comments

  1. Rev. Dean on Monday, April 27, 2020 at 7:10 am

    I see this as a sign that capitalism is a monetary system which has outlived it’s usefulness and should be replaced by a more Socialist Democratic system in which equality is of most importance and healthcare is one of the many areas which would be much better then, as we are all treated as equals.

  2. Beth Alexander on Monday, April 27, 2020 at 7:40 am

    The link to the full article has been corrected.