I had a family member who nearly died from end-stage liver disease caused by Hepatitis C. He received a life-saving liver transplant with probably only days lef

I had a family member who nearly died from end-stage liver disease caused by Hepatitis C. He received a life-saving liver transplant with probably only days left to live. From the article: There’s a drug called Sovaldi that works astonishingly well to cure people with the liver disease Hepatitis C. The rub? It costs $1,000 per day for all 12 weeks of treatment. 12 x 7 x $1,000 = $84,000 I saw the bill for my family member's liver transplant. The total cost for the transplant was over $500,000 and that doesn't include the pre-transplant and post-transplant treatments and hospitalizations. At $84,000 for a cure, Sovaldi is an absolute bargain. Of course, not everybody has $84,000. That's why we have insurance. Unfortunately, the payers in this article, state Medicaid programs, are in many cases heading down a path to insolvency. That's the bigger issue. In private insurance markets, most drug makers provide significant discounts to incentivize payers. These discounts often amount to 50% or more. So you can't address the issue of access to treatment without acknowledging that insurers, not drug makers, ultimately decide which patients have access. Gilead has a program that provides Sovaldi free of charge to patients who are uninsured or have been denied treatment. For those who cannot obtain Sovaldi, there are a variety of other Hepatitis C treatments available, so it is unlikely that somebody with a need will go untreated, even if their payer won't give them access to the treatment they prefer or which may be most effective. This is a much more complicated issue than the article here suggests, and it's easier to find a scapegoat than to honestly address the complexities of this market.