Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

alternet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 355 posts

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#271

Post by chongli »

emn13 wrote: post #245
x5n1 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be priced according to ability to pay based on income. The same is the reasoning why the drug is so cheap in other countries, their people can't possibly afford the prices. So it makes no sense for citizens of wealthy countries to have to pay huge markups if they don't have the money. It makes no sense from an economic perspective to force people to go into bankruptcy just because they got sick.

That's only fair if you believe that the seller has the moral right to maximize their earnings. I think that's questionable across the board, but certainly in the pharmaceutical industry. As in: the idea behind capitalism (the reason we put up with it) is not that price-gouging is some fundamental right we should worship, but because capitalism works . What's that mean? It efficiently allocates resources. How does it…

The best alternative is really quite simple: public funding for lifesaving medicines. This model also works for the provision of medical care and is used throughout the entire developed world, with one exception.

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#272

Post by icebraining »

rdtsc wrote: post #41
voodootrucker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's fair for a multi-billion dollar company to exploit the "global market" by farming work out to 3rd world countries... But not for a customer who is literally dying to take advantage of that same "global market" to save himself? Like everything else in the global economy, laws are only enforced to protect the strong against the weak, and yet we wonder how all the wealth is accumulating in the hands of the few.

> So it's fair for a multi-billion dollar company to exploit the "global market" by farming work out to 3rd world countries... That makes sense. It is interesting that when usually there are "anti-globalization" protests shown in the media, the protesters are presented as fringe idiots, violent, with facemasks and so on. Sort of implying "look at these crazies not wanting countries get close to each other, trade and…

All evidence I've seen points to a massive reduction of poverty "at the bottom" (the actual bottom, not developed world's bottom) as globalization has increased in the last few decades. On what do you base the claim that it has increased pain?

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#273

Post by MagnumOpus »

bandrami wrote: post #247
scottishfiction wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scotland, Wales and NI do. And England has only a nominal charge.

Right, and I think that's it (SK does the "nominal charge" thing).

Most western countries do the "nominal charge" thing - which in this context is just about equal to zero.

For instance: German public health insurance buys a course of Sovaldi for EUR40,000 ($46,000), the patient pays a cost of EUR10 ($11.50).

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#274

Post by opk »

halviti wrote: post #243
chris_wot wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, India basically refuses to recognise patents for a wide variety of pharmaceutical products. For a long time they refused to recognise patents for drugs that combat AIDS and a thriving market for generics sprung up. There was a lot of posturing and complaining by pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and the U.S. Government tried to heavy the Indian Government, but to no avail. When it became apparent that th…

While I tend to lean more to your side of the argument, the devil's advocate in me has to point out the fact that you leave out the massive costs of research, development, clinical trials / fda approval, etc. that go in to getting a drug to market. This not to mention all the extra capital needed to fund research into all of the drugs that never make it to market before a company finds something that works.

One of the problems with the patent system is that it pushes medical research in the direction of drugs because they are easier to market than alternatives such as knowledge of medical procedures.

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#275

Post by GordonS »

1856294 wrote: post #201
rayiner wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, the company that actively prevents people from obtaining life-saving medicine for billions extra in profit is more reprehensible than the company that makes no pretenses about having anything to do with life and death. So the moral impact of a company's actions depends not on the net good done by that company, but on the "pretenses" it does or does not put on? It's morally better to waste natural resources on…

Why does everyone pretend that iPhones are a luxury? They are not. It's merely 800€. Even the drug in india still costs twice as much.

> merely 800€

I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I hope so...

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#276

Post by Daishiman »

maxerickson wrote: post #251
Daishiman wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How funny that you mention that, given that the Internet, the very backbone upon so much of the economy moves around, started and developmed mostly as... a military project. Supported by universities and public research.

The market paid Cisco and the like to develop the ever advancing hardware that powers the internet as it exists today.

Sure they did, because corporations are much better at iterative product improvements than at radical, high-risk research projects with no short-term returns. So?

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#277

Post by Daishiman »

maxerickson wrote: post #251
Daishiman wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How funny that you mention that, given that the Internet, the very backbone upon so much of the economy moves around, started and developmed mostly as... a military project. Supported by universities and public research.

The market paid Cisco and the like to develop the ever advancing hardware that powers the internet as it exists today.

Sure they did, because corporations are much better at iterative product improvements than at radical, high-risk research projects with no short-term returns. So?

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#278

Post by chimeracoder »

lucaspiller wrote: post #224
mikekchar wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you could get that to fly politically. While it is true that drugs require high prices to recoup research cost and that drug patents allow drug companies to charge those high prices, they don't just recoup prices. They charge as much as they can. From the point of view of trying to save as many people as possible for the money, that sucks, but from the point of view of encouraging investment in drug com…

> They charge as much as they can How does it work in European countries where health care is (mostly) paid for by the government? Do these companies still charge the same prices as in the US?

> Do these companies still charge the same prices as in the US?

The majority of global R&D happens in the US market, even though the entire world benefits from it. So pharmaceutical companies have come to expect to recoup their R&D costs from the US market. Ultimately, this means that European markets benefit from the research without having to shoulder the bulk of the costs from it.

If they couldn't do that here, then yes, they might adjust their business models and try and charge more in Europe and India. But as mentioned above, India doesn't recognize patents, and since the R&D isn't taking place in Europe, there's less of a need to charge the same prices there. And because there isn't one single European market, its more complicated to price drugs there in such a way as to reliably turn a profit (after accounting for R&D) in each individual country than it is in the US, where insurance players are licensed by state but the pharmaceutical market is otherwise roughly uniform across all 50 states.

Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India

#280

Post by refurb »

bandrami wrote: post #240
junofan wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't we get cheap drugs when patents expire? Are you saying we should invalidate all existing drug patents today and cease R&D rather than wait for patents to expire?

No, the manufacturers apply for a new patent for using the drug to treat a different condition, which still keeps generics out of the market.

With a few exceptions, that's pretty much untrue.
Post reply on HN