New awards seek to highlight how “profit mongering” affects US healthcare

A new annual top 10 list will highlight the year’s “most egregious examples of profit mongering and lack of empathy” in US healthcare, according to the Lown Institute, a health advocacy group based in Boston (http://lowninstitute.org/news/blog/shkreli-awards).

The list has been named the “Shkreli awards” after Martin Shkreli, the “pharma bro” chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who raised the price of pyrimethamine, a 60 year old generic drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, by 5000%, from $13.50 (£9; €12) to $750 a tablet.1

Vikas Saini, president of the institute, said the goal …