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

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

#301

Post by sabujp »

gozur88 wrote: post #22
surrealvortex wrote: post #8

I'm conflicted about this article. On the one hand, the pharmaceutical companies gouging ordinary Americans is abominable. Doing something to circumvent their greed is something to support. On the other hand, if enough people exploit loopholes like this, and the pharma company actually felt a significant drain in revenue, they may decide not to license the manufacture of these drugs in India at lower prices. If $84,0…

India can break patents on drugs it considers too expensive. The real danger is if this sort of thing makes drugs unprofitable pharma companies won't spend any money researching drugs to treat uncommon conditions, and the drug will never exist to start with. We'll get endless varieties of new opioids, blood pressure pills, pecker perkers, and not much else.

lol, where do you think drug companies do research? That's right in India.

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

#302

Post by collyw »

rev_null wrote: post #282
halviti wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This ignores the fact that the expensive, risky research is often funded by public money instead of by the pharmaceutical companies. So, the taxpayers pay for the research until it shows progress. Then it gets patented and sold to a large company which sells it back to the public for $1000/pill. It's a pretty gross abuse of the original idea of patents.

To be fair the risky research side is relatively low cost. It's the development part - putting drugs through clinical trials that costs a hell of a lot. And its usually drug companies that pay for that.

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

#303

Post by maxerickson »

swalsh wrote: post #299
YPCrumble wrote: post #291

Gilead has developed the first drug since penicillin to cure a major disease and people think the price tag is too expensive. In the modern world, it's not ideal to create a drug to cure something. Once people are cured they no longer need your drug. That's why we have so many drugs like Lipitor and Viagra that treat symptoms but do not cure. The "problem" with Sovaldi/Harvoni is that the patient only takes it for ~9…

I worked for a company that developed some PA criteria for these drugs, I can assure you a lot of debate went into this criteria.. these two specific drugs are probably the most hotly contested drugs. If we sold them at the 84k price tag to anyone that COULD use it, the entire insurance industry would go bankrupt, literally. Not even an exaggeration. While your logic is sound, the drug is cheaper than a liver transpl…

Do you have a sense of the production costs?

If they aren't very high, the US government could start making the company look like jerks by offering $50 billion for the patent. I'm pretty sure they would be able to calculate a nice return based on a payment like that.

The math works fine for that, there's ~3 million people just in the US to treat, paying $50 billion would save a substantial amount just treating those patients. Of course, we don't run our government based on math that makes sense, so it's a pipe dream.

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

#304

Post by [deleted] »

iofj wrote: post #255
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…

This is one of the "problems" the TTIP attempts to "fix", isn't it ? That Indians get access to cheap medication. https://donttradeourlivesaway.wordpress.com/2015/10/20/how-t...

[deleted]

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

#306

Post by gaur »

bunnymancer wrote: post #286
ubernostrum wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually a significant population in the US was infected by blood transfusion; the US didn't start properly/universally screening blood and taking precautions for hep C until 1992. This is why there's a spike in infection rate among older people, and why hep C is considered a looming cost crisis for Medicare -- we don't yet know the full extent of the infectious disaster that was unscreened blood, but it's ticking aw…

There's something rather unsettling about the realization that Jehova's Witnesses had a point about something once..

A broken clock is right twice a day.

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

#308

Post by lhopki01 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #109
GreaterFool wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a private global (excluding USA) medical insurance that covers costs (no in-patient) up to 1M and it costs me $1k/year. I've been hearing about Obamacare for years and always thought "well, it's good that more people will have insurance". But when my colleagues in US told me what their deductibles on a good insurance plan are ( thousands of dollars. my deductibles are $375) I was floored. The whole medical sys…

America subsidizes the health care of the entire world. Because such a large portion of health profit comes from the US. If the US ceased to exist then global prices would increase and global research would decrease.

Pharmaceutical companies have an average profit margin of about 17%. That's about the highest by industry in the world. I think it's more accurate to say that America subsidises the profit margins of pharmaceutical companies.

Important to note is that that profit margin is after taking into account that pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than they do on research. How about we just take out the profit margin, take out the advertising and give the money directly to universities who already do a lot of the research and then make the results freely available? That way US citizens on HN will still be able to feel superior about subsidising the healthcare of the 'entire world' and everyone will have access to low cost generics.

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

#309

Post by justsaysmthng »

corvallis wrote: post #122

Something to keep in mind is the population that typically has chronic Hep C requiring this drug. It's IV drug users who share needles. Think they have $84K? Nope. Think they have insurance? Nope. Guess who pays for it. Oh that's right, it's Medicaid! It's you, the taxpayers. Where is there a large concentration of people that have Hep C? Prisons. Guess who pays for it then? Still you! The prison systems are obligate…

My father is currently under treatment (for around 50,000 EUR) He's not an IV drug user, never was, most probably it was a dentist who infected him many years ago.

Don't oversimplify things like this, there are lots of situations you aren't thinking about..

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

#310

Post by collyw »

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…

One look at the UK housing market shows that capitalism doesn't efficiently allocate resources. (But then it is anything but a free market).
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