I will admit, I haven’t really been looking too closely at the antics of Martin Shkreli, founder and CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who is famous for buying the rights to the drug Daraprim (generic: pyrimethamine, used for the treatment of toxoplasmosis in patients with AIDS) and jacking up the price from $13.50/pill to $750/pill.

What I figured would happen is that (1) health insurance companies would just pay up and then try to make up for it by raising customer’s premiums and/or lowering health care provider’s reimbursement rates and/or (2) hospitals and pharmacies would just stop ordering the drug and providers would just use atovaquone (± sulfadiazine) or even dirt cheap trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. The outrage would soon die down. Regardless of actual sails of Daraprim, Martin Shkreli would still make millions of dollars. Yay, capitalism! regulatory capture and government-backed monopolies!

Guess I was wrong.

Imprimis Pharmaceuticals has decided to sell pyrimethamine/leucovorin for 99¢/dose which is pretty hilarious.

The CDC recommendation for treatment of toxoplasmosis is to use pyrimethamine and leucovorin with sulfadiazine anyway, so this is perfect.

The only thing that really remains to be seen is how soon health insurance companies will cover it, especially since Imprimis is compounding this formulation.