I keep seeing this and it's still totally unbelievable to me how many in the tech world have been taken in by this charlatan.

>Insurance companies paid the increased price.

Yes but who pays insurance? Us as individuals.

>Drug prices are a very small percentage of the costs insurance companies pay (most of it going towards doctors' fees IIRC).

Do you have a recent source for this? Thanks.

>The extra profit was put into researching improvements on Daraprim, which was a 70 (?) year old drug.

Shkreli admitted his company sold the same form of pyrimethamine, or Daraprim, that had been on the market for 70 years — although he expressed hope that his company could develop a more potent form of the drug that did not hinder the body’s production of folic acid.

“The mechanism of the drug is folate inhibition,” Anandya reminded the CEO, adding that what Shkreli had proposed might not even be scientifically possible.

“The entire mechanism of the drug is to stop the production of folic acid in the first place and the bulk of its side effects are tied up with that,” Anandya said. “It’s kind of counter-intuitive to say that you are going to solve this problem when it’s not a problem as much as the whole raison d’etre of the drug. This I find is the main problem with your plan. That the solution is not worth $749.”

“One cannot suggest such a (monstrous) increase in the price of a drug which by your own admission does nothing better while telling me your plan is to (because this is the only way it would work) create an entirely new drug not related to pyrimethamine at all because it would require a new structure,” the physician continued. “Which in turn would give you a big hassle since you would require testing and FDA approval from scratch anyway. I think your plan is flawed.”

http://www.alternet.org/economy/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-ge...

And:

Here’s an excerpt from an email sent Dec. 8, 2015 from McLeod to Nancy Retzlaff, Turing’s chief commercial officer and Eliseo Salinas, Turing’s president of research and development: “I understand I know nothing of what makes Turing solvent and able to do research and of course I value that a lot too.…However, Martin [Shkreli] did say that he had to maximize profit for investors and that was why price is high. He did not say it was for research primarily that it was a high price. He called that the ‘dirty secret’ of pharma.”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/1bn-here-we-come-martin-shk...

And:

As for Shkreli’s claims that the profits will go to research for a better version of Daraprim, experts aren’t buying it.

"Turing has not got a single clinical trial underway. Shkreli’s not testing new drugs of any kind for toxoplasmosis. He's got nothing registered," Attaran said. "No one needs a new drug for toxoplasmosis anyways. It works so well bloody well."

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/sep/24/...

>The only reason Shkreli's company even acquired the rights to Daraprim is because other companies couldn't make enough money on it to want to keep making it.

Ah yes, the ever charitable Shkreli.

Here’s Shkreli on May 27, 2015 in an email to the chairman of the board of directors after news that Turing was making big progress toward acquiring Daraprim: “Very good. Nice work as usual. $1 bn here we come.”

He sent a couple of emails to company contacts, saying that the drug purchase would be announced, and providing some estimates of how much money the company could make. From one on Aug. 27, 2015 he wrote: “I think it will be huge. We raised the price from $1,700 per bottle to $75,000…So 5,000 paying bottles at the new price is $375,000,000—almost all of it is profit and I think we will get 3 years of that or more. Should be a very handsome investment for all of us. Let’s all cross our fingers that the estimates are accurate.”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/1bn-here-we-come-martin-shk...

>The only reason Shkreli's company even acquired the rights to Daraprim is because other companies couldn't make enough money on it to want to keep making it.

I'd love to see a source for this as well. As far as I know Impax had no plans to discontinue the drug, do you have anything indicating otherwise?