Drug manufacturer Valeant aggressively grew its asset and share price by gobbling up smaller drug research companies and startups. They’ve been also funneling shady deals through back doors to trick insurance companies in order to control the market and shoot up the prices by jaw-dropping 800% in extreme cases.
Drug companies are notoriously known to jack up prices to control the market. It’s so fundamentally wrong to link pharmaceutical companies with share-holder profit. The spirits to serve patients and business for-profit only mentality simply don’t mix. I don’t understand why the government is lacking regulations to this extent to allow life-saving drugs to become inaccessible by patients who have urgent needs.
On the other hand, long R&D cycle and strong clinical regulations make it challenging for investors to justify their investment with short term ROI goals.
This challenge requires the ingenious collaboration between industry/economics/business to help achieve a well-balanced result: Patience’s equal access to health care/drugs, the viability of drug company, and incentives and profitability of business shareholders.
