It’s difficult not to rejoice at the news that Martin Shkreli, the notorious, 32-year-old former hedge fund manager and prescription drug vulture was arrested and charged with defrauding his investors. Shkreli became infamous when his latest company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased the rights to make a life-saving drug and raised its price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Shkreli bragged about that achievement, one replicated with the purchase of the rights to produce other crucial drugs whose patents had expired. But Shkreli was not alone in legally taking advantage of loopholes in the law, government incentives, FDA rules and market factors that allow pharmaceutical companies to make huge profits by controlling the market for orphan drugs and even commonly used medications, such as the antibiotic doxycycline.

According to reporter Andrew Pollack, writing in the New York Times, the price of an old drug used to treat multiple sclerosis increased from $10,000 per year to $60,000 in less than a decade. One company raised the price of a drug used to treat spasms in children from $40 per vial to $10,000. New drugs to treat cancer commonly cost $10,000 per month or more.

Presidential candidates are talking about drug prices though no one has suggested that the United States control prices the way most nations do. A survey last fall by Reuters found that Americans pay three to 16 times more for prescription drugs than residents of most nations. The price of top brand-name drugs sold in the United States increased by 127 percent between 2008 and 2014. That won’t change by locking up Martin Shkreli.

To stop the gouging, laws will have to change and loopholes must be closed.

Hillary Clinton has proposed capping what a patient must pay per month for a drug at $250. Both Clinton and rival Bernie Sanders want to allow Medicare to use its clout to negotiate with drug companies. How such proposals fare in a Republican-controlled Congress is another matter.

One answer, at least when it comes to drugs no longer under patent protection, is to create nonprofit companies to produce them. One such effort is under way in Massachusetts, where Deborah Drew, a veteran of several Big-Pharma companies, is raising money to open Drew Quality, a nonprofit that will produce generic drugs. Drew hopes to charge prices that will allow employees to be paid well and fund expansion, but otherwise sell pills for as little as possible.

So far, the idea has proven too new to win support from philanthropic foundations, but Drew’s initial request for $2.5 million in funding is within Kickstarter range.

The Gates Foundation, which has funded global efforts to lower the price of drugs such as those used to prevent malaria, should consider backing Drew’s effort. So should billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, who recently announced his intention to create a nonprofit to work on immigration and education reform.

In the meantime, super-wealthy people who want to stop price gouging and the need for people to cut pills in half or go without medication should think about what Drew’s doing.

Not long ago, Puerto Rico was one of the world’s top five producers of pharmaceuticals. Then favorable federal rules to benefit or subsidize manufacturing on the island expired. Now, the island is flirting with bankruptcy, the unemployment rate is 12.6 percent and 41 percent of the island’s residents are poor.

Former drug manufacturing factories are empty. Workers are available. That makes the island a good place for a nonprofit to produce affordable, generic drugs on a large scale.

– The Concord Monitor