 It's a Congress and Katie Porter Democrat, but I guess these days it doesn't really matter if you're bashing pharmaceuticals. Democrat Republican doesn't matter. So I'm going to go over this. It's about a five minute video. We're going to go throughout the whole thing. Two things I want you to know. One, one, it's her attitude, her dismissive condescending arrogant. Who is she? What is she ever done attitude? She's a lawyer. She's a consumer protection lawyer, the worst kind of lawyers. Second, note how pathetic the drug company executive is, pathetic in defending himself. I mean, it makes it so much worse, so much worse that he can't actually defend himself. All right. Now, Marvin, you just have no clue about the data. You should actually study the data. You've read a book by some skeptic of chemotherapy, and I know lots of people have taken chemo. And yes, they die at some point. We all do. I hate to break it to you, but we all do. But I know people who've lasted for decades, decades, and whose life was clearly saved because of chemo. And you can join, you can join Steve Jobs and juicing instead of taking chemo, or instead of taking surgery when when you get cancer and see how that'll that'll work for you. Unfortunately, my hero Steve Job was really dumb when it came to this kind of stuff. All right. Let us, let's get to Katie, arrogant, pretentious. What's the whiteboard? And of course, the pathetic, pathetic. I mean, you know, the very fact that why, why is the government even debating drug prices? Why is the government? Why is the government even, why is this even an issue? Why is the government bringing in executives in business and private business and harassing them? All right, here we go. Oops. No, clicky on the wrong button. All right, we're going to go here and we're going to press play. Mr. Hollis, you are CEO of Selgene until fairly recently. And as my colleague, Ms. Presley established, Selgene makes Revlimid, a cancer drug. Revlimid is a cancer drug that treats myeloma, myeloma, and it has over time been myeloma and over time is being used to treat other other forms of cancer. Let me add that the patent expires in 2022. The drug recently has a competitor in Europe. It's not clear how they're distributing in Europe, given that the patent hasn't expired yet, but so there's some controversy about it. There's also a number of generic pharmaceutical companies in India that are suing the manufacturer, that are suing the manufacturer of this drug to try to bring in what do you call it, drugs to compete with it in spite of the fact that it still has a patent. I couldn't get clear information about this, but it looks like the patent actually has been extended because of the new uses found for the drugs. I think when you find new uses for the drug, the patent is extended by a few years and I think that's why it's 2022 and not earlier. The drug has been on the market since 2005 and you'll see that in a minute. This company has saved thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives with this drug. By the way, the company itself was bought by Bristol Myers, I think a British pharmaceutical company a year ago, two years ago, for a lot of money. I can't remember 50, 60, 70 billion dollars. The company is no longer an independent company. It is owned by Bristol Myers, which is again one of the ways in which innovative companies cash out by selling to so-called big pharma. Bristol Myers would be big pharma. All right, let's listen to Katie a little bit. I'll keep it erupting. Do you know what the price of Revlimid was when it first hit the market? It comes to the whiteboard. Remember the number, but it was reclaiming my time. It was $215 for one pill. Do you know what the price of Revlimid was in 2013? One of her tactics is not to let anybody answer the question really, but part of this is the weakness of the CEO. You'll see. I can look it up, but I don't recall. I don't have it in front of me. 412 per pill. How about the price? Let's get in a more recent where your memory may be jogged. How about 2017? I would say approximately $700 a pill. But again, I don't have it in front of me. 719 per pill. And today, Revlimid is cost $763 per pill. I'm curious, did the drug get substantially more effective in that time? Did cancer patients need fewer pills? Why is that the question? So something went up in price? Why is the issue? I mean, what she's arguing is that the price should be linked, the price should be linked to what? To its effectiveness or to its increased effectiveness, not to its absolute effectiveness. It's increased effectiveness. The price should be linked to, quote, productivity. She's trying to be here clever, right? So somebody asked, what's the exact are we on farmer? Look it up. It's fairly easy to find these kind of things. It depends on the time period you're looking at. Not very high though. All right. So basically, the price has more than tripled. By the way, this is not adjusted for inflation, but okay, more than tripled since 2005. Why? During that time, the development of Revlimid included six additional indications, some in lymphoma and the balance in patients with different reclaiming my time. So she's not gonna let him speak, right? So why is this important? Why is the fact that the six more indications are important here? Well, because that is going to determine the demand. Demand has gone up for this drug. And there is only money manufactured. And therefore, the marginal benefit of this drug has gone up because more people can benefit from it. More diseases can be cured from it. More cancers can be treated with it. And that's why the price goes up. And while maybe there's competition for the drug in one indication, in one form of cancer, they might but be in others. So it's not about inflation. It's not about productivity. In a sense, the drug has become more productive. It cures more patients. And therefore, its value has increased. And because it's under patent, the company can legitimately and legally and from an economic perspective, reasonably charge more money for it. Alice, you discovered more patients who might benefit from paying $763 a pill, but being able to use a drug for more patients doesn't necessary more price. Is there why it does exactly that right? That this is the economic she doesn't understand demand went up. More people want this. Therefore, they're willing to pay more. Why is it? I mean, I go to back to this point. Why is it the politicians business? How much anybody is paying for a drug? You don't want to pay this amount? Don't pay? You don't want to take cancer drugs? Don't take them? Why is it any of the business of politicians? How much is being charged? And notice the patron, how patronizing she is, how arrogant she is. The drugs start to work faster? Were there fewer side effects? How did you change the formula or production of Revlimid to justify this price increase? But that is a Marxist view of how prices are set. Prices are not set based on your costs of production. I mean, this is econ 101. Prices are not set because of your costs of production. Now, this is the way maybe European countries price what they're willing to pay for drugs. And this is why it took a while for European countries even to introduce this drug and why people died in Europe because they didn't have access to this drug. But you don't price a drug or any product. How much does it cost Apple to produce an iPhone? That's irrelevant. As long as it's less than what they sell it at, it's irrelevant. What determines the price? It's something called, I think this is an econ 101. I think it's something called Oh, supply and demand. And in this case, demand, because because they have a patent, they can charge whatever they want. And they have to figure out a price that is reasonable in a sense that in a sense that it is not so high as they would reduce the demand. It's high enough for them to recuperate all their costs. Now notice also, and this is important, six new indications. How did these indications happen? The drug came out in 2005, as she said, it costs $200 something dollars. And at the time $200 something dollars, probably was going to recuperate the R&D. And I know I'm getting technical, but if I'm going to do a show on this, and if I'm going to show how ridiculous she is, we have to get into the weeds. Since then, they've had six new indications, six new cancers that you can treat with this drug. How did they get to that? By doing more trials, by investing more money in the drug, more money in the drug, in trials to show that it was safe and useful for these other indications. So the cost of the drug to them actually increased over time, as they invested in the drug, as they invested in research, as they invested in trials, just this one drug to show that it was efficacious for these other cancers. And now this drug doesn't just treat one cancer. And again, the FDA makes it very, very, very expensive to do all that. So if you do all that, that probably justifies the increase in cost. All right, let's keep going. He can't answer. But that patient changes are for subset, there's different patients with disease. Reclaiming my time, Mr. I was claiming his whole time, she doesn't want him to answer, even if he could, is how did the drug improve? If I were to look at a pill and analyze it from 2005, when it costs to irrelevant, it improved in the sense that it treated more cancers. But a lot of research went into that pill from 2005 to today. Thank you. So to put that in perspective, you hiked the price by $500. When the average Orange County senior only has $528 left in their bank account after they've paid their basic monthly expenses. How much of this is out of cost from average? We're talking about Orange County, a relatively wealthy community, all on Medicaid. How much? How much does an Orange County senior pay for this drug? How much? This is a drug covered by Medicaid. So what relevance? This is pure demagoguery. What relevance does how much money and Orange County senior have in the bank account have on this? Exactly zero. But again, nobody's going to call her on it. No, nobody cares. Facts don't matter. It's great demagoguery. All right. The average Orange County senior can't even afford one pill. And you said we Orange County senior gets Medicare, but that is not correct. Do uninsured patients sometimes pay the list price? I can imagine there are circumstances where under insured or uninsured patients would be paying close to or at the list price. I don't know But wouldn't if they're paying that doesn't that mean they can afford it? And how many people are that? Really? I mean, insurance companies cover this? Medicaid cover this? Medicaid covers this? How many seniors uninsured? None. Because they all have Medicaid. And if they're not seniors, why was the amount of money she gave before in the bank account relevant to this discussion? And if they're paying this, can't they afford it? And doesn't this drug company have a charitable foundation that if they can't afford it pays for it? So it's likely that whoever's paying the full price is wealthy with no insurance for some reason. And that that number of people is very low. But again, this is not about honesty. This is not about truth. This is not about facts. These specific circumstances, but Now notice this. This is what it's all about. Um, do you know what this number is? I Does it ring any bells? I think you're referring to my compensation in some way. In some way. This was your compensation in 2017 for being CEO of Celgene. And that's a lot of money. It's 200 times the average. So that's his compensation of Celgene. Is this that's relevant to what exactly? Americans income and 360 times what the average senior gets on social security. So 360 times, but he's not on social security. He's actually working. He's actually the CEO of a drug company that is producing products that are saving people's lives. So why is it relevant? How much somebody on social security is getting? When again, the health care costs of somebody on social security are being paid by Medicaid. I mean, this is so dishonest. This is so corrupt. Now of that 13 million, about 2.1 million came from your company hitting yearly earning targets. And more than half of the bonus formula was based on those targets. So he got a bonus based on earnings. So she's gonna have, she's gonna say he had incentive to raise prices. Any increase in the price of Revlimid would also increase your bonus by increasing earnings. Isn't that right, Mr. Ellis? If revenues increased and expenses did not, then earnings would be enhanced. Thank you. Mr. Ellis, in fact, the oversight committee found that if you hadn't increased the price of Revlimid, you wouldn't have gotten your bonus. Mr. Ellis, do you know how much you personally received in bonuses over two years, the last two years, just because Solgene raised the price of this one drug, Revlimid? She can't do that calculation. She doesn't know that. She's extrapolate. But I don't know the exact number that you got $500,000. You personally received half a million dollars personally just by tripling the price of Revlimid. So to recap here, the drug didn't get any better. The cancer patients didn't get any better. You just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price scouting. And to be clear, the taxpayers spent $3.3 billion on Revlimid, $3.3 Medicare, $3.3 billion. Yeah. Now, no. Mr. Ellis, you were CEO of Solgene until fairly recently, and as my colleague, Ms. Presley, I mean the dishonesty. I mean, he's the CEO of a company. This company bought many other drugs, many other companies did research, did R&D, did a wide variety of things, and he got paid for that. He got paid the market price. Again, CEO salaries don't get determined by the price of one drug. They get determined by supply and demand for CEO skills. And the reason he got $13 million is because he generated value, and the reason he got a bonus is he generated a value to investors who employ him, who own the company, who own the drug. He does not owe the US government. He does not owe the US people his allegiance. His allegiance is to his shareholders. And that's it. So, the whole, this whole thing is so dishonest and corrupt. It is truly, you know, I don't know. And what's shocking to me is that people who listen to my show who still hate drug company executives, who think drug companies executives are the problem. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. All right. Before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. 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