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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

#261

Post by maxerickson »

WalterBright wrote: post #178

Keep in mind that the potential for huge profits was what motivated private investors to fund development for a cure. Without that, Hep C would still be a death sentence, regardless of how much money you had.

Pharmasset spent in the ballpark of $1 billion developing the candidate that Gilead decided to buy (I'm taking the annual spend on total operations there, rounding up to $100 million and multiplying by 10 to get the $1 billion).

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/882095/0001193125113...

It sort of looks like they have figured out how to have excellent pricing power when they are willing to bid $11 billion for the company. Part of that is probably that looking just at this drug is a facile analysis of the value of Pharmasset (which did more than develop 1 drug, they built expertise in creating antivirals). Of course, the expertise story implies that they don't need to recover the purchase on just this drug.

I guess some of it is the complexity in the medical payments system.

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

#262

Post by herbst »

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…

Not sure if this is ment against "free" health care or you are just noting how corrupt the U.S. health system is.

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

#263

Post by Ralfp »

irremediable wrote: post #248
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.

I'm fairly sure most drug companies now spend more on marketing than on R&D/testing.

Most drug companies sell generics because they don't want to enter costful R&D game.

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

#264

Post by icebraining »

m_mueller wrote: post #188
refurb wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think it's fair to price a product relative to the wealth in a given country? I think it's quite fair to be honest.

Certainly. And it should be just as fair to allow parallel imports of everything. Want to charge more than [retail price B + transport cost B->A + import tax A]? Guess what, the market is going to take care of this for you.

Of course, that just means they'll sell at the expensive price everywhere.

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

#265

Post by herbst »

bandrami wrote: post #242
walterstucco wrote: post #213

Guess who can get them for free? those living in civilized countries with universal health care systems.

Very few countries offer free prescription drugs. Not even Canada does that.

It is still something different when my health care just pays for it and later talks to me about the costs than when i need to find a way to finance it from the beginning.

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

#266

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

There should be some sort of government chartered corporation for generic drug manufacturing. After a drug patent expires, they review the drug, determine the manufacturing cost, and compare it to the market price for the drug. If the market price is above some multiple of the manufacturing cost, they set up their own production line and sell the drug at their cost.

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

#267

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

airless_bar wrote: post #227
KaiserPro wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if western governments stop enforcing drug development intellectual rights? No new drugs. Pretty simple. Now you ask, is that a bad thing? well yes, yes it is. Right now, we are running out of (or have run out of) top end antibiotics. Partly from over use (I'm looking at you America.) mostly from using them to get much higher yields in farm animals (yup, thats right, last line antibiotics are being used on pig…

Americans brought the end of antibiotics onto themselves. Even if the world found new antibiotics, their culture is just not amenable to use them responsibly. How to prevent them from spreading their new diseases to the rest of the world? Let's follow the advise from their next president and put a wall around their country.

Let's not pretend the entire world doesn't use them irresponsibly.

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

#268

Post by JoeAltmaier »

nkozyra wrote: post #82
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, the price of a thing is related to the resources a person can bear on a task. People are priced out of better lives all the time - cars, jobs, where they live, what they eat. Its the way society works. To make medicine a special case, with the govt providing infinitely deep pockets, is irrational. Inconsistent with how we run everything else anyway. Yes I believe studying, working, getting ahead ought…

> People are priced out of better lives all the time But again, this is not what we're debating. It's why the "average car price" does not apply.

Clearer: its not 'ok' that segments of the population are 'priced out'. Its just economics. Life is hard.

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

#269

Post by icebraining »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #257
phaemon wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No new drugs. Pretty simple. I doubt that. There's no reason why the same research couldn't be academic research. Global spending on drugs research is only $77 billion a year. Take the 20 richest countries in the world and that's less than $4 billion a year each. That's less than half the UK's EU rebate. (EDIT: not enough coffee to add correctly)

Bingo. The private profit motive isn't the only way to get things done. Two of the greatest scientific and engineering feats of the 20th century, the atom bomb and landing on the moon, were both government run and funded.

Not sure if the war motive is much better than the profit motive, though.
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