WASHINGTON — Three years after Martin Shkreli became the poster boy of pharmaceutical company greed, another drug company executive is setting himself up for a similar infamy. And now, just as then, there is little the government can do — besides make a fuss.
Nirmal Mulye, CEO of Nostrum Laboratories, quadrupled the price of a generic liquid antibiotic used to treat bladder infections, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. And he had little shame.
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The government wants to control our pain, but can’t control prices of needed medicine! Ridiculous. KARMA
Maximizing return, ie by jacking up prices as high as possible, is actually a legal obligation of the CEO towards shareholder under US law, unless the company is organized as B-Corp. The only limit would be if the action of the CEO would short or long-term damage share holder value. The correct response would be to change US corporate law and not to moralize about its ethics and consequences, while the CEO is exposed to share holder lawsuits. Two sides of the coin!