Turing Pharmaceuticals sold an AIDS drug for $750 per pill, which sparked nationwide outrage, and caused a competitor, Imprimis, to recently start selling the same drug for less than $1-a-pill, reported The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Last month, when entrepreneur Martin Shkreli acquired the drug Daraprim, he jacked up the price 5,000 percent from $13.50 to $750 a pill, according to The Daily Mail. The price-hike incited the New York Attorney General to investigate Turing Pharmaceuticals for possibly unlawfully restricting competition, The New York Times reported.
The 32-year-old former hedge fund manager, and now controversial CEO, is being investigated because he may have violated antitrust laws by limiting the type of and number of pharmacies he distributed the AIDS drug to, noted The New York Times.
Turing's new competition, Imprimis Pharmaceuticals Inc., will supply its version of Daraprim for less than $1 per capsule, according to The Daily Mail. A bottle of 100 pills will cost a patient $100, which is considerably cheaper than Turing's price of $75,000 for a bottle of 100 pills priced at $750 per pill.
Imprimis plans to make cheaper versions of expensive generic drugs, CEO Mark Baum, of the drug compounding firm told the Associated Press.
"We are looking at all of these cases where the sole-source generic companies are jacking the price way up," Baum said. "There'll be many more of these" compounded drugs coming in the future.
So far, Turing has not lowered the price of Daraprim, even though last month CEO Shkreli said he would, the Associated Press reported.
