1. I am quite familiar with the GAAP requirements. Please browse my blog. Unless you think inflation has driven the cost of mebendazole from a few pennies to $10.54 and albendazole from $0.017 to $1.58 within two years, I think the IDPIG is a reasonable indicator. A glance at the IDPIG for the prior 3 or 4 years will show minimal inflation.

2. Mebendazole in 500 mg doses is the primary med in discussion on the GIK issue. It is my impression that is the primary med typically behind the large valuations in the NPO community. That one med typically is extremely material to the financials. It is not legal to distribute 500 mg mebendazole in the U.S. That makes all U.S. valuations irrelevant for that drug. For meds legally salable in the U.S. the Red Book is still not relevant since it doesn’t have much correlation to actual prices.

3. The job of every news anchor, network reporter, TV news host, radio talk show host, newspaper editor, and newspaper reporter on the planet is to drive traffic. That’s also the goal of most bloggers. So I concede your point AC360 is trying to drive traffic. How is that relevant? Your ad hominem attack on Anderson Cooper does not address the accuracy of his report. Do you have some information that calls into question the accuracy or reliability of documents he aired?

Thanks again for your comment.

Would you like to write a guest post expanding your ideas on valuing GIK?

1. As a CPA I would hope that you are familiar with the GAAP guideline that states goods should be valued at the time of donation. The IDPIG lags at least 2 years behind. The most current data on IDPIG is for 2011.

2. I would also hope that you are aware of the fact that donated items should be valued according to their primary market. Medicines manufactured by US companies who’s primary market is the US should be valued according to US market data points. See the Time Magazine article from March 4th titled “Bitter Pill: How outrageous pricing and egregious profits are destroying our health care.” This publication shows that finding a consistent cost of medicines in the US is near impossible. As such the nonprofit industry’s use of the Pharmaceutical Red Book makes more sense.

3. As a hopefully rational human being you should know better than to base anything on Anderson Cooper’s agenda driven reporting. His job is not to be fair and open minded, his job is to create controversy to sell stories.