DELUTH, Mississippi –
After hedge-fund magnate Martin Shkreli announced that he would be raising the prices of Daraprim, a drug used to fight AIDS, from $13.50 to $750 per pill, several other companies decided to follow suit by drastically raising prices, including Johnson & Johnson, the trademark owners for the drug Tylenol.
“Frankly, a lot more people get headaches than have AIDS in this country,” said Johnson & Johnson spokesman Larry Myers. “If [Shkreli] is going to raise his prices on such a niche drug, and people will still have to buy it, then Tylenol is in an even better position to raise prices, as many, many more people use Tylenol on a regular basis than would ever use Daraprim.”
Myers says that the average cost of an individual Tylenol pill previously was about 17 cents, or about $8.99 for a bottle of 50 Tylenol pills. Tylenol PM, which is their number-one selling version of Tylenol, sold for about 27 cents previously, or about $13.99 for a bottle of 50.
“Tylenol PM, which many people in North America rely on to sleep easily at night, and wake up pain-free, will also be dramatically increased as well,” said Myers. “We expect to fetch around $800 per pill for the PM version of our flagship drug.”
Myers says that the price increase will not happen overnight, but that consumers should expect to see prices rising slowly over the next several months.
“If Shkreli can do it with Daraprim, then we can do it, too,” said Myers. “I sincerely hope that other drug companies realize that they should not be giving away their product so cheaply, and follow suit by bending customers over, and painfully raping them hard, right in their wallets. If only that monetary rape was a pain they needed Tylenol to get rid of, too.”