Thank you. Yes, we can do this, although I doubt we will. But it might not involve treating everyone for everything. There just isn't that much money. Finally, whether any of you want to hear it or not, people are no more entitled to get free access to a $100k+ treatment than they are to wear an iWatch, drive a Tesla, or own a yacht. I have no idea why everyone thinks all medical care is a human right. As soon as something expensive becomes available, there is always someone to tell us that we should pay for it collectively. But everyone cannot get everything; there are financial constraints. Basic stuff to make people comfortable, vaccinate them, treat easily treatable illnesses, help people improve their lifestyle, etc: yes, maybe we should ensure that those things are available. But there is just not enough money to treat everyone for extremely complex and rare diseases with these very costly treatments. It is a drain on society and the things we could be doing for people. Should this society really even be paying for old people like me to get cardiac stents and such problems of the elderly? For example, I am sure my insurance company is paying my glaucoma specialist more per year than my entire premium. By the time I die or he retires from practice, I suspect he will have extracted more money from my insurance company now (and Medicare later) to care for me than I ever paid into them. Is this really fair to expect that these costs be spread across society when there are impoverished people who cannot even afford to buy a pair of glasses? We can probably buy glasses for 300 people for the cost of one of these expensive pills. What about the children who need vaccinations, healthy food, and an excellent education? There is a lot of work still needed just on that basic stuff, which in my opinion should take precedence over diseases of the elderly and exotic cures that cost as much as a luxury car or a small house. Some choices have to be made.
A lot of hepatitus can be prevented by not having anal sex and not sharing needles. If somebody gets hep C by one of those means do we really have to be all concerned if they get a cure or not or how much it costs? The companies that develop these cures shouldn't have to care about how much it costs a patient, besides the patients' life is on the line, they will find a way to pay for it LOL
you are crazy if you think the average man can cure himself of the diseases that are still incurable in the world. and if you profit from government subsidized technology everyday but still blame the government, then thats hypocrisy.
I don't believe the previous poster is trying to say that people can cure their own diseases, but rather that the private sector can deal with these things without help from government. When there is demand and supply, the market regulates prices, which is not what's happening now. We need a middle ground. Some extra patent protection time for developing an orphan drug is reasonable, because this effectively increases the "supply" of patients. However, if the government and insurance companies (who are now so heavily regulated by the government that we can practically think of them as another arm of government) continue to pay these high prices, the pharma companies will continue to charge them. We need to let the market forces work a bit more. Maybe not exactly laissez faire, but something much closer to it than what we have now.
The U.S. Pays a Lot More for Top Drugs Than Other Countries "Prices for brand-name drugs are typically higher in the U.S. than other developed countries. The drug industry has argued it's misleading to focus on U.S. list prices that exclude discounts struck behind closed doors with insurers. A Bloomberg News analysis finds that even after these discounts, prices are higher in the U.S. than abroad. Seven of eight top-selling drugs examined still cost more in the U.S. than most other countries. Bloomberg estimated the actual amounts that drug manufacturers are paid on a sample of top-selling drugs. SSR Health, an investment research firm, used prescription data and U.S. list prices to determine the drugs' sales in the country before discounts. To approximate the discounts, SSR Health subtracted the actual U.S. sales reported by the companies. Bloomberg compared the discounted monthly prices with list prices from 14 countries, using local data from IHS Inc., a data analysis and consulting firm, and other sources. "We can no longer sustain a system where 300 million Americans subsidize drug development for the entire world," said Steve Miller, chief medical officer for Express Scripts Holding Co., the largest U.S. manager of prescription-drug benefits. The drug industry sees it differently..." http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-drug-prices/
The hep C pricing got a lot of peoples' attention. The alternative however is a transplant, a risky procedure that likely costs several times what the hep C drug does. The government is upset because they end up paying for most of them, as a substantial percentage of hep C sufferers are not able to pay, whether it is $84,000 or $8,400. A first step might be for the government to take active steps to discourage behaviors that lead to getting it, but of course they will not step on the toes of the rich and powerful gay lobby, so forget that. The bigger issue is other countries effectively expropriating the intellectual property of US pharma companies. The reason it is cheap in India is they have a law that says, charge our mandated price or no patent protection. The same scheme is used in many countries. That is what the Express Scripts guy meant by saying Americans cannot subsidize drug development for the entire world. I'm no expert but this would seem to me to be an unfair trade practice. I think the solution is to come up with a scheme that forces other countries to pay their fair share and cuts our prices. You know, the sort of winning approach that trump will take.
Fortunately or unfortunately we live in a largely capitalistic society where the price of goods is mostly a 'what the market will bear' basis rather than a cost basis. When life saving drugs are involved we become indignant when we see that mechanism in action. I am sure that the executives at Gilead have personal goals to become members of the 1% club like Donald Trump or Mitt Romney. Is Donald Trump's fortune or Mitt Romney's a reflection of their tremendous contribution to society? Decidedly not. How about the Gilead executives? Gilead has priced its 'miracle cures' based on what they think the market will bear, although Congress has the idea that they might reset this perception. If we want to move out of the 'what the market will bear' economy we will have to reset a lot of perceptions. The graphs comparing drug costs around the world largely show the diversity of economies rather than anything else. e.g. A loaf of bread in Los Angeles costs an average of $2.29. In Portland Oregon it costs $1.79. In India I can get a loaf of bread for $0.28. In Australia it will cost me $4.22. http://www.dailyfinance.com/photos/...d-the-world/?photo=2#!fullscreen&slide=988843 The Capitalist model is based on greed and motivates individuals to pursue personal wealth at whatever cost society will bear. Is it more wrong for Donald Trump to make his fortune by serial bankruptcy (which essentially robbed investors and rewarded him), Is it more wrong for Mitt Romney to make his fortune by buying companies and breaking them up costing workers their jobs? There are of course limits that society sets on the capitalist model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_and_Clyde Drug companies innovate new drugs and then soak society for whatever they can get. Isn't this the same capitalistic system we all live under... or is it? I have known people who renounce the capitalist model. They would no more extract the maximum reward for their efforts than they would rob a bank. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Scullion They are living their own non-capitalist model and time may name them in their list of the most influential but they largely eschew personal fortune for spiritual gains. Don't expect the drug companies to join Sister Mary any time soon.
"Gilead has priced its 'miracle cures' based on what they think the market will bear, although Congress has the idea that they might reset this perception." "Drug companies innovate new drugs and then soak society for whatever they can get. Isn't this the same capitalistic system we all live under... or is it?" Drug research is not cheap. Just this year Denderon, a company that had a true cure for prostate cancer went bankrupt because the cure was too expensive. If Gilead had known many years ago that they could not sell their Hep C drug by any more than what is affordable to all people, they would have realized that it's not worth the risk and allocation of resources necessary to get it through all levels of clinical trials. It just would not be worth the risk. Personally, I hope they are making a ton of money on the drugs that they sell so that they can invest in developing drugs for new conditions that don't currently have a cure as we're all terminally ill. That seems to be what some political candidates don't understand. When you cap the reward, you're also capping the risk that investors are willing to take. When people don't take risk, scientific / medical / engineering progress stagnates. I don't see much difference between complaining that something is too expensive vs. complaining that something is not available because no one has invented it yet.
The research may have already been funded partially by the government via NIH. If so the Government already owns rights to the drug as part of the grant process. The company is entitled to a reasonable profit. If there is no profit incentive then their will be very little research done within for profit corporations. All research would be in Universities and government labs. Where much of it is already. In almost all cases research done in privately owned pharmaceutical companies uses information in the public domain that came from government funded published research. This,however, does not impart any government rights to drugs that may result. Only if government funding is provided directly to the corporation will rights be imparted. Generally this would mean that the resulting Drug would be available to Government entities such as the VA at low cost. Whether these rights are exercised is another matter. I have read that drug companies, including some of the majors, spend more on advertising than research. I don't know how true this is.