Solving Pharma's Shkreli Problem

Even before his arrest on securities fraud charges, Martin Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, had become the pharma industry's biggest villain. Shkreli was largely unknown outside biotech circles until September, after his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased Daraprim, a drug to treat rare but deadly toxoplasmosis infections in AIDS and transplant patients, for $55 million and promptly raised its per-pill price from $13.50 to $750 overnight. The Internet quickly named him the "Most Hated Man in America." This is pharma's Shkreli problem. Understandably, respectable pharmaceutical companies want to distance themselves from this circus. Here are some more interesting ideas: 1. Make the system transparent. 2. Give the FDA the ability to treat a price increase of an off-patent drug as a shortage. 3. Pay different amounts for cancer drugs depending on the type of cancer. 4. Bring down the hammer for rare-disease drugs. 5. Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. 6. Give drug companies skin in the cost-savings game.