The drugs cost too damn much.

The other day, in one of the most cartoonishly evil decisions I have ever seen, millionaire hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli's company Turing Pharmaceuticals purchased the drug Daraprim, which is used to treat Toxoplasmosis in immune compromised patients, the only population that actually is threatened by the disease. He then promptly raised the price from 13.50, or 18.50 if you believe a statement he made, to 750 dollars per pill, in the most transparent attempt at price gouging seen since, well, since the last company bought a previously cheap drug and raised the price, that too has been rescinded, but the practice is basically industry standard.

Shkreli's obvious corruption certainly helped draw attention to the problem though, he looks like a handsome villainous executive straight out of central casting, and has a shady history to boot, currently being sued by his old company for more or less looting the place, among other things.

He also decided to spend a day or so defending his position vigorously on social media, Twitter and Reddit primarily, to basically no effect, he even prompted other notoriously villainous people to come out against him, Donald Trump calling him a "disgrace" among many, many other things. Trump is wrong about most things, but he is right this time.

Shkreli has since backed down, stating he would reduce the price, though he has not gone on record with what that price will be, so the story isn't over yet.

This is in general good news though, drug pricing has come to the forefront of public debate, at least for a minute or two, and the companies involved are getting more unwelcome attention than ever before. I believe that there are two ways to unite people in a cause, the hardest is to do so in support of something, being pro-whatever just doesn't inspire people to get out and fight that easily, except in the most extreme cases of charismatic leaders. The second option is a lot easier and used by politicians since time immemorial, and that of course is to unite against something, preferably an individual or group of people, this can often be bad, WWII being the best(?) example of that, but in this case it might help a great deal.

More and more, people in America are starting to expect healthcare to be affordable, and getting used to being able to find treatment when they get sick, like it or not, Obamacare is probably here to stay and people are using it, finding out that it helps a lot, and some are looking to see what else we can do. Which is great! We are the greatest country in the world apparently, why not take care of our sick? Seems a good thing to do, pretty sure Jesus had a few words on the subject if you are in to that sort of thing.
 Price gouging like this is more and more becoming indefensible on moral grounds, I mean it never was, but at least companies tried a little bit to be subtle about it, spacing out price increases, or at the very least lying about how much it costs to produce, but the urge for short term gains is overcoming the ability to be smart about ripping off the American public, it sort of is a case of two problems, not solving, but interfering with each other.

The stock market in its current form rewards short term profits over all else, and shareholders in companies are largely uninterested in long term safe plan, they want to see massive growth every quarter if at all possible or heads will roll, meanwhile, to make those profits, companies must cut corners faster than they would otherwise, so a price hike that might take years an occur without incident happens overnight, and is met with public outcry.

It's almost inspiring really, their greed is getting in the way of their evil.