While the rest of the world hates on Martin Shkreli, the “pharma bro” who jacked up the price of an AIDS drug from $13.50 to $750 a tablet, to Fox host Eric Bolling, Shkreli is just a savvy businessman.
From Media Matters:
ERIC BOLLING: Now I say be careful before you call for this guy’s head. It’s the free market that provides the profit motive that entices drug companies to risk their own money to discover cures for diseases. Now think about this for one second. God help us if we left that to the government.
[...]
That drug already went off patent and he picked it up, it was cheap, and he raised the price. If it’s so valuable someone else will come in and compete.
Bolling’s cohost, Greg Gutfeld, thinks the answer is to “get rid of regulations” on drug development.
GUTFELD: Price controls are not going to stop this. What we have to do is get rid of the regulations that slow the development. It takes 10 years and 10 billion dollars… to get approved by the FDA.
Tell you what, Greg: you take drugs that have not been fully vetted by the FDA first and then let the rest of us know how they work and if they’re safe.
However, after becoming Public Enemy Number One, Shkreli has announced he will “lower the price" of the drug, Daraprim. He did not say how much he would lower the price.
Meanwhile, watch Bolling defend Shkreli below, from the September 22 The Five.
Hi, I’m back!
You won’t find this covered on right-wing propaganda factory GOP TV but NPR covered the extent to which drug companies fund medical studies and how corrupting it is regarding clinical trials of pharmaceuticals. So what could go wrong with more deregulation?
The far right logic goes along the lines if some company is incompetent or unethical enough to develop drugs 💊 which do harm, not good, then when people find out it’s self-correcting (so sorry for the poor saps who took tainted drugs) and it’ll drive the bad actors out of business.
One obvious problem with this is it requires a watchdog media and we all know FOX News would bury stories like this and smear the ‘liberal mainstream media’ for being anti-capitalism if they report it.
