3 ms·

I think this is completely wrong. The NIH funding is already the way it is. There was no special offer for Gilead. For people to come after the fact, and state

I think this is completely wrong. The NIH funding is already the way it is. There was no special offer for Gilead. For people to come after the fact, and state that we know what is a reasonable profit is the height of arrogance and greed. Gilead did something that was once considered far off - they created a CURE for Hepatitis C. Because they created a cure, we are infinitely better off in that regard - before there were 0 people getting reliably cured, now there is a number greater than 0 getting reliably cured of hepatitis C. In 20 years, the patent will expire and whoever wants to can make this for free if they want. I propose the following compromise. Let the government create and fund a biomedical research lab for creating new drugs. The process for drug approval should be the exact same as for everyone else. Any drug that the government's lab discovers and gets approved can be given away or whatever the government wants. Any drug not discovered by them, they should let the companies that actually discovered the drug set the prices. This is hacker news created by YCombinator. Will a VC fund a startup whose best case return is 10x investment? Would we rather have more money/effort invested in curing disease or making "sharing economy" apps? I think companies that do save lives should have outsize rewards. For government to step in and try to change that would be killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

bcoates 11y ago
Even countries that have strong drug price negotiation schemes are only getting modest discounts for Hepatitis C drugs; they're willing to pay because even at full price it's more expensive for someone to slowly die of liver failure than a course of Sovaldi that will cure them in a month. The regulatory failure is the VA system being unwilling to pay for it (assuming that's true), not the perfectly reasonably priced drug that's cheaper than alternative, less effective treatments.

bcoates 11y ago

Even countries that have strong drug price negotiation schemes are only getting modest discounts for Hepatitis C drugs; they're willing to pay because even at full price it's more expensive for someone to slowly die of liver failure than a course of Sovaldi that will cure them in a month. The regulatory failure is the VA system being unwilling to pay for it (assuming that's true), not the perfectly reasonably priced drug that's cheaper than alternative, less effective treatments.