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>Perhaps motivated by the high costs to taxpayers, lawmakers are pushing Gilead to explain why it charges so much. It doesn't help that Gilead is offering Soval
by jere 13y ago
>Perhaps motivated by the high costs to taxpayers, lawmakers are pushing Gilead to explain why it charges so much. It doesn't help that Gilead is offering Sovaldi in Egypt at a 99 percent discount to U.S. prices, or about $900 for a full course of treatment.
I wonder how difficult it would be (from a legal perspective) to take a 3 month vacation to Egypt and save almost six figures.
- melling 13y agoMedical tourism is already a market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism Now it just needs a new big Silicon Valley behind it. The "Uber" of medical tourism?
- fennecfoxen 13y agoThe Law of One Price strikes again!
- fancy_betta 13y agoA 3 month vacation to Egypt isn't free. Even if you can live cheaply, you'll still likely have bills that you need to continue paying in the US. I guess this could work if you can sever all financial ties to the US for 3 months and still have enough money to live in Egypt, pay for the medicine, then come back to the US and restart your life.
- thenomad 13y agoYou'd need to take a sabbatical from your work in the US, rent an apartment in Egypt, and continue to pay bills in the US. But given that by doing so you'd be saving $83,000, that still sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I'd imagine you can live pretty nicely in Egypt for a lot less than $27,666 per month...
- ryoshu 13y agoIt might make sense for insurance companies to pay people travel to and stay in Egypt for the course of the treatment.
- giarc 13y ago-JFK -> CAI April 30 $498 -CAI --> JFK July 31 $661 -Lonely Planet says you can get food and lodging for $20/day (x90 days = $1800) -Cost of treatment $900. Total of $3859 vs $84 000. Might just work ;)
- HillRat 13y agoEgypt wouldn't be my first choice for medical tourism, even for cheap pharms. The primary source of Egypt's incredibly high HCV infection rate was through medical treatment -- inadequate sterilization of glass syringes and inadequate surveillance of stored blood for transfusions. As a result, HCV spread like wildfire through the population, and secondary infection routes like tattoo parlors keep the virus circulating.
- omgriffiths 13y agoThis does seem ironic - the fact that taxpayers are on the hook for the cost is exactly why they can charge so much. If they could only sell to people who pay with their own money, would it be in their interests to charge this much?