Assertion Contradicted
Shkreli: Zero percent of patients lost access to Daraprim after price hike
“Zero percent.”
Insight
Shkreli: Drug prices should equal the averted cost of alternative care
“When you do the pricing, I think that the best logical thing to do is pick a price that the alternative care, in other words, a world without this drug, you would forego all those costs for this drug.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shkreli: Machines will replace human doctors entirely within 30 years
“There's, if we do our jobs right, there's no such thing as a doctor in 30 years. That every operation, every prescription, every piece of medical advice you ever get from now on comes from a machine and it costs 10 cents.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shkreli: Made his wealth in clinical drug development, not price hikes
“A lot of people think that I take medicines and raise prices. Well, this drug was barely in human beings. It had been in like 30 or 50 people. Helped up until that point. And, you know, I made most of my money in, in sort of developments in, in environment on …”
Opinion
Shkreli: Big Law Firms Easily Secure Rapid Federal Indictments
“And it's not hard if you go to a law firm, you know, like a Cooley, Cleary, Gottlieb, Skadden, Arbs, pick your, Paul Weiss, pick your biggest law firm. You say, hey, we have this guy, he did something bad, you know, look into this. You know, usually you'll get…”
Assertion Contradicted
Shkreli: Every insurer covered Daraprim because it was cheaper than ICU stays
“There's not an insurer in the world that didn't cover Daraprim because If you don't pay the 50,000 dollars roughly what Daraprim costs for a whole course, forget per pill, about 50 grand if you end up needing Daraprim. If you don't pay that, you're gonna pay f…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Apr 2028
Shkreli: In the future, humans will marry AI and AI will vote
“You know, probably some of the craziest ones I've made, including include things like they'll, they'll be kind of interspecies marriage between AI and humans. There'll be AI fundamental rights for voting and things like that. That'll kind of reshape society. S…”
Opinion
Shkreli: Mark Cuban's drug company will not save anyone money
“The, whatever Cuban's doing is not gonna save anybody any money. And it's like, I can make Mark any money either, but this could actually change the curve on healthcare.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shkreli: Vivek Ramaswamy was his biggest investor and supersized his business model
“And my friend and at the time it was actually my biggest investor, Vivek Ramaswamy, he's now running for president. He basically took our business model and supersized it.”
Assertion Supported
Shkreli: Acquitted of Retrophin-Related Federal Criminal Charges
“And it's like, you know, I was actually acquitted of those charges, and I'm so proud of that.”
Disclosure
Shkreli: Turned a profit selling Wu-Tang album during the NFT boom
“I decided to sell the Wu Tang album which is a funny thing because there's this NFT bubble and I basically said, oh, like if I turn this into an NFT or sell it to a crypto bro, like, you know, I'll, I might even get my money back on this thing because it was b…”
Assertion Contradicted
Shkreli: First individual personally sued for monopoly by the FTC
“The Federal Trade Commission actually personally sued me for monopoly. I'm the first person in American history, the Sherman Act, which is 125 years old, the first person to personally be sued by the Federal Trade Commission, which is very odd. Because John D.…”
Assertion Partly supported
Shkreli: 90% of healthcare costs stem from physicians and 10% from pharma
“90% of healthcare costs come from physicians. 10% come from pharma.”
Disclosure
Shkreli: Top software unicorn CEOs and billionaires backed his startup
“And like, I'm so lucky that these people, some of whom started some of the biggest software companies in our industry literally like maybe the top five unicorns in software, like three of the four CEOs. It was like that where, where like I messaged these guys,…”
Disclosure
Shkreli: Deliberately embraced being a villain after intense media backlash
“I realized like, there's no way out of this and I'm gonna have to embrace being the bad guy. And some people will get the joke and some people won't. But you know, fuck it. If that's what people want, then I'll be the bad guy. And I sort of embraced kind of be…”
Assertion Contradicted
Shkreli: Five of the top ten hedge funds of all time faced regulatory shutdown
“If you look at the top hedge funds from the nineties, almost none of them exist today. And I think of those like top 10 hedge funds of all time, like five were shut down by regulatory. Intervention.”
Insight
Shkreli: Biotech investing teaches operations far better than tech investing
“In biotech, you can actually like learn to pick up most of the operating stuff from being an investor. Whereas I think in tech, like, you know, being an investor in a software company certainly doesn't make you a programmer.”
Insight
Shkreli: Sifting through PubMed can make anyone a biotech billionaire
“PubMed is the government database of all scholastic biomedical literature. So, thirty-six million papers. If you sit there long enough and you have the passion, you can become a billionaire. It's just a matter of sitting there and sifting and sifting and sifti…”
Assertion Partly supported
Shkreli: Vertex drug eliminates cystic fibrosis for 90% of patients
“There's this miracle drug by Virtex, one of my favorite drug companies for cystic fibrosis. Miracle product, literally cure for cystic fibrosis. Amazing. Cystic is no longer a medical problem for 90% of people with cystic fibrosis.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shkreli: US healthcare spending will reach 50% of GDP over time
“And that's why we've spent, we've gone from something, five percent of our GDP on healthcare to 20%. And I think that's going to go to 50% over time because our basic goods and needs are Maslowian kind of needs or med, you know, we can eat, we can have shelter…”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Shkreli: Predicts the FTC's $60M antitrust ruling against him will be overturned
“And they won. So I'm appealing that, but they won a sixty million dollar hit against me. So until I figure that out, I'm sort of not, not in the market. It's very like bizarre ruling that I think will get overturned.”
Insight
Shkreli: Inhibiting one's personality for corporate PR is an insane metagame
“It's an insane meta where you're constantly just like getting to the next point of like inhibiting your personality and what are you really saying? And just come on and say it, you know, and I think that that's a really freeing, you know, thing to do.”
Opinion
Shkreli: Google and Meta had OpenAI-equivalent tech years ago but missed productization
“Both Facebook and Google had sort of equivalent technology to open AI, in my opinion, years ago, and they just still just haven't sort of seen the actual product, you know, making sense and launching.”
Opinion
Shkreli: Bill Gates remains privately ruthless despite philanthropic image
“It's just sort of this public image of like, no, no, I'm this benevolent philanthropist. You don't understand. You know, privately, the guy's still just as ruthless, still just as vicious and just as energetic and intense as he was when he was a kid.”
Martin Shkreli