Thursday, August 04, 2011

Dendreon Drop Overdue

I'm a long term bear, but there's no double-dip on the horizon, just endless slog. Thus, I'm buying here.

As per Dendreon (DNDN), the stock that lost 65% of it's value yesterday based on lower earnings guidance, I think it was well overdue. It had a $6B market cap based on no current earnings and one drug, Provenge, which was shown to increase the age of prostate cancer victims by 4.1 months. The price tag is a staggering $93k, which supposedly was going to be paid by US taxpayers, as by law Medicare does not take into account a drug's cost when considering if it will pay for it (which they said they would)!

I think we are broke enough to tell men if they don't have and want to spend the $93k, you're just going to die a little sooner from this cause, which is what non-Medicare patients will do. The FDA study shows people living 25 rather than 21 months, which I don't think is a good buy. I would bet most people would rather leave their family $93k more than live in agony another 4 months, but in our crazy health care market no one pays for anything out-of-pocket, so they feel insulted to actually have to make the decision. If we really just wanted to prioritize life enhancing dollars, we could increase it more than 4 months by simply giving everyone access to aerobics classes and a dietitian, which would cost much less.

5 comments:

r2d2 said...

I think you are right when it comes to health choices, but it still sounds harsh when you say it. With humans, being wrong in a useful way seems to be a lot more effective than being right, and that's probably because reality can be quite disturbing. I agree with your call on markets too.

CodeWizard said...

We seem to have adopted medical care as a long term constitutional right (or human right if you back the U.N. on such things). Not sure why this is the case, other than big government wonks see it as one more way to expand big government.

Anonymous said...

FWIW, James Altucher has been following / writing about this stock for a long time. Search dendreon+altucher for the archive.

Dipper said...

The price tag is a staggering $93k, which supposedly was going to be paid by US taxpayers, as by law Medicare does not take into account a drug's cost when considering if it will pay for it (which they said they would)!

over here in the Socialist State of the United Kingdom we have an organisation that assesses the cost-effectiveness of such drugs. It has attracted some criticism, but a study by the son of a man denied state-funded medicine ended up supporting the principle.

sounds like you should have one of those too.

Eric Falkenstein said...

cumulative default rates look at the default rate from the time of the original ratings, so if it downgrades in 2 years, defaults in three, it will show up as a 5yr default. But that's why the 1 year defaults are pretty much zero for IG, because usually things take a year to blow up.