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Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

stories.gilead.com

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Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#41

Post by renewiltord »

hasperdi wrote: post #9

What this letter did not address is the fact that the US is hoarding almost all of Gilead's Remdesivir in the upcoming few months. Leaving the rest of the world with almost nothing. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/us-buys-up-w...

It's fine. The formulation will get out there, and the world's chemists will figure out how to make it, and then the Indian generics factories will pump it out en masse.

The hard part with drugs is usually finding out if they work. This one is hard to make, but they'll figure it out.

And then each country gets to make the choice for itself of how much it loves IP law and how much it loves human life.

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#42

Post by Tinyyy »

At $2340 a patient, the drug is an expensive treatment plan but not overpriced imo. If the claimed reduction in time to recovery is true, then around $600 a day of reduced recovery time is probably worth the hospitalization and long term health costs.

Besides having to recoup the costs of development of Remdesivir, as well as the costs to trial various drugs that never make it to market, Remdesivir is currently in short supply and probably costs a significant amount to produce. It seems unreasonable to expect a good in such short supply to be sold for cheap. The overall cost of $2k isn’t prohibitively expensive such that many lives would be lost over this anyways.

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#43

Post by jjeaff »

strstr wrote: post #10
chrisco255 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a randomized clinical trial comparing the two treatments?

I’m not certain it matters. The hydroxychloroquine paper was retracted: that’s not a great sign for it’s effectiveness as a treatment.

The paper that was retracted was a paper that concluded that hydroxy chloroquine usage caused higher fatality rates in covid patients.

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#44

Post by sydd »

hasperdi wrote: post #9

What this letter did not address is the fact that the US is hoarding almost all of Gilead's Remdesivir in the upcoming few months. Leaving the rest of the world with almost nothing. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/us-buys-up-w...

from OP's article:

> In the developing world, where healthcare resources, infrastructure and economics are so different, we have entered into agreements with generic manufacturers to deliver treatment at a substantially lower cost.

I assume this means that:

1. Remdesvir is not that hard to manufacture.

2. Gilead will license the drug to 3rd party factories, so no need to manufacture them in the US.

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#45

Post by arpinum »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #20
_pmf_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight face? I hate to tell you, but it's not better in Europe just because the racket is obfuscated by several more layers.

Please back up such an unlikely sounding claim with several excellent sources. Here in the UK, there is exactly one layer: the NHS. It negotiates prices directly with drug suppliers, and as the sole buyer (monopsony) is able to get a great deal. It also sets the prices paid by consumers (the prescription price), which is a flat price charged for all drugs (yes really all of them) and is currently £9.15 (about 11 USD)…

Drugs are more streamlined, but most of the NHS looks a lot like the US system. There are 8 major private electronic health systems, and many have not signed interoperability pledges. 145 CCGs. Foundation Trusts, remember just 10 years ago GP Practices would become part. Quasi-private GP Practices. Mergers going on every year (195 CCGs to 145 last year). Funding comes out of a myriad of mystery buckets (winter funding).

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#46

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kenhwang wrote: post #23
trowawee wrote: post #13

American taxpayers contributed at least $70m to the development of this drug[0] and our reward is to be gouged by Gilead. It's the exact same shit they've pulled with Truvada[1] and it's grotesque. [0]: https://www.citizen.org/article/the-real-story-of-remdesivir... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/opinion/prep-hiv-aids-dru...

It typically costs ~$2B to develop a new drug. Taxpayer contributions are practically negligible.

How much did the Fed spend buying Gilead's bonds?

And how much more/less effective is Remdesivir compared to the generic Dexamethasone anti-inflammatory?

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#47

Post by furyg3 »

_pmf_ wrote: post #6
ohazi wrote: post #4

> In the U.S., the same government price of $390 per vial will apply. Because of the way the U.S. system is set up and the discounts that government healthcare programs expect, the price for U.S. private insurance companies, will be $520 per vial. Sigh How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight f…

> How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight face? I hate to tell you, but it's not better in Europe just because the racket is obfuscated by several more layers.

Not here in NL. My monthly premium for myself and child is around €130 for a premium plan with a €500 yearly deductible, and most normal costs and doctors visits are excluded fro this. I had an injury that required surgery and physical therapy and did not hit this deductible.

Someone I know had cancer which required two years of therapy and also somehow did not hit their yearly deductible. A friend had a burnout and needed therapy over a long period of time, also very little personal costs.

This premium that I pay is more or less matched by my employer, that money goes into a fund to balance out insurers who have more risky demographic coverage. The government does offer subsidies for people who cannot afford the monthly premium, this obviously comes from taxes.

That’s pretty much it for funding the system. Personal premium + employer premium + tax subsidies for the poor. Dutch people complain about costs ‘spiraling out of control’, and it is true that over the years healthcare has gotten more expensive, but these criticisms are laughable when compared to the US.

It’s possible to fix the US healthcare system. Just pick any other western developed nation at random and do what they do. You’ll be better off.

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#48

Post by flak48 »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #27
hasperdi wrote: post #9

What this letter did not address is the fact that the US is hoarding almost all of Gilead's Remdesivir in the upcoming few months. Leaving the rest of the world with almost nothing. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/us-buys-up-w...

Isn’t the welfare of its citizens basically the primary job for any government? Hopefully now that this is determined as effective the manufacturing can ramp up and the whole world can get access.

Generic versions of Remdesivir are already available in India for $70 (under license from Gilead). I hope other countries ramp up production too.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-s-hetero-pri...

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#49

Post by josefrichter »

Aside from the sensitive topic of pricing the new drug, I'd like to take this opportunity to remember the late Czech scientist Antonin Holy.

His lifelong research led to creation of many groundbreaking drugs against HIV, hepatitis and now Covid. This humble "invisible" guy's work literally saved millions of lives and is behind many of current Gilead drugs.

See https://english.radio.cz/antonin-holy-one-countrys-most-reno...

Re: Open Letter from Gilead CEO: Remdesivir Pricing

#50

Post by kenhwang »

hkt wrote: post #18
_pmf_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight face? I hate to tell you, but it's not better in Europe just because the racket is obfuscated by several more layers.

In the UK we pay a fraction of what companies in the US do. See also, our nightmarish trade negotiations with the US: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/01/nhs-drugs-b... Not a scholarly article, intentionally. I wanted to give a flavour of the existential (to our health system) nature of the problem of US style drug pricing. There's also the small matter of pricing varying highly by country. Another more…

Europe is one of the primary reasons US drug pricing is so messed up. Many European countries negotiate drug pricing on cost to manufacturer (practically nothing) with a negotiated slim profit margin. Then the drug companies just offload the rest of the R&D cost onto the US consumer. But, almost the entire cost of a drug is in the R&D.

Imagine if the rest of the world only paid for CPUs based on the per unit cost of silicon but none of the fab or engineering cost. So $20 CPUs for the rest of the world and $20k CPUs for the US since the US consumer has to cover the 10s of billions for fab/R&D cost while the rest of the world only pays for the silicon.

That's what happening with drug pricing right now. People _need_ medicine, which is how we got into this mess of drug pricing since it's frowned on to price people out of medicine. But European countries aren't exactly poor struggling post-war economies anymore. They can afford to shoulder more of the R&D cost instead of laughing at the US subsidizing the world.

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