5 ms·

Exactly. These guys have essentially cured a major _viral_ disease. If they are wallowing in cash because of it, that's fine with me. Even if my premiums go up

by pkulak 12y ago

Exactly. These guys have essentially cured a major _viral_ disease. If they are wallowing in cash because of it, that's fine with me. Even if my premiums go up 2%. If the public sector is not going to do the work, there needs to be incentive for private corporations to lay out the millions required to advance medicine. We can't have near-zero public funding and then get all pissy when miracle cures are expensive. And this is very close to "miracle cure". I had Hep C when I was younger (blood transfusion) and I went on interferon and ribavirin, which was 6 months of daily (maybe twice daily, can't remember) shots. And I was told that there was still a very good chance that I would never be "cleared". And sure this is $1000 a pill, but that six months of shots was not cheap either. Probably at least half.

tim333 12y ago
Congrats to them to for curing a major disease but some bits of the economics seem a bit odd - initial research cost about $14m paid partly by tax payers. Gilead spends "tens of millions" to put it through trials and then it gets sold, partly back to the same tax payers, for about $84k * 3 million = ~ $200bn. ( http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/31/costly-new-hepatitis-treatments-curing-patients-but-straining-health-care-system-finances/SmBE9NoUESxjfgphfqvXKL/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/31/costly-new-he... )
- deleted 12y ago
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- bigtunacan 12y ago
  Did you read that whole article, or just skim it? The piece where I am assuming you got your numbers from... "Federal grants and Pharmasset’s research outlays on Sovaldi totaled more than $14 million, but Gilead spent tens of millions more to shepherd the drug through clinical trials." That is only a tiny fraction of the cost invested by Gilead on this drug. If you read the whole article you would see that Gilead took a big risk and paid $11B to purchase Pharmasset before this drug had been approved so they could bring it to market. Their total cost is well over that by now. Now add to this the fact that when a pharmaceutical company makes a new "wonder drug", the other big pharma companies get right to work on make workable variants so they can get a piece of that pie. Take a look at GILD on Yahoo Finance sometime and you will notice they are remarkably flat lately despite great profit margins, P/E, etc... This is because investors are worried long term. A variant product could destroy the profitability; now add to that the government wants to get involved and start regulating the prices on this thing. PFFH

by pkulak 12y ago

tim333 12y ago

Congrats to them to for curing a major disease but some bits of the economics seem a bit odd - initial research cost about $14m paid partly by tax payers. Gilead spends "tens of millions" to put it through trials and then it gets sold, partly back to the same tax payers, for about $84k * 3 million = ~ $200bn. ( http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/31/costly-new-hepatitis-treatments-curing-patients-but-straining-health-care-system-finances/SmBE9NoUESxjfgphfqvXKL/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/31/costly-new-he... )

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
bigtunacan 12y ago
Did you read that whole article, or just skim it? The piece where I am assuming you got your numbers from... "Federal grants and Pharmasset’s research outlays on Sovaldi totaled more than $14 million, but Gilead spent tens of millions more to shepherd the drug through clinical trials." That is only a tiny fraction of the cost invested by Gilead on this drug. If you read the whole article you would see that Gilead took a big risk and paid $11B to purchase Pharmasset before this drug had been approved so they could bring it to market. Their total cost is well over that by now. Now add to this the fact that when a pharmaceutical company makes a new "wonder drug", the other big pharma companies get right to work on make workable variants so they can get a piece of that pie. Take a look at GILD on Yahoo Finance sometime and you will notice they are remarkably flat lately despite great profit margins, P/E, etc... This is because investors are worried long term. A variant product could destroy the profitability; now add to that the government wants to get involved and start regulating the prices on this thing. PFFH