The Glade 4.0

.....if you have $100,000+ to spend on the treatment.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/12/30/256885858/-1-000-pill-for-hepatitis-c-spurs-debate-over-drug-prices

Surprised this hasn't shown up here yet. $150 production cost, sell it for $100k. Everyone else in the world is going to get it for $150 too, but we get ****.

They will get their run and in a few years their will be a generic. Good on them for finding a cure.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Xequecal:

Please stop posting outrageous, misinformation about the healthcare industry and pharmaceutical industry in the United States. Your $150 figure is actually just the cost of raw materials. How much money do you think Gilead spent building the equipment and machinery necessary to produce a complex biologic medicine like Sovaldi? Better yet, how much volunteer labor are they going to need to keep their factories running?

By the way, there are have been effective cures for all 6 Hep C genotypes for quite some time; this one just kills you less than the others.

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I don't have Hepatitis C, and I don't know anyone with Hepatitis C, but this sounds like fantastic news. Wow. Spend 84k on a 3 month treatment and you're cured? Amazing!

Over the last five years, I've been on three different meds (one at a time) that go for over $55k a year without insurance. They aren't a cure; all they do is slow disease progression by 30-50% (depending on the drug). They come with some pretty terrible administration methods and side effects as well.

Do I wish I could spend $84,000 for some pills and be cured? And the worst side effects are fatigue and headache? Holy smokes, you bet I do.

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Oh come on, Khross. Like capital costs really matter to price.

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The Dude abides.

Or research costs. I mean jeez everything everyone does should be done at just their costs and everyone should just decide to work someplace to help out. Saving for kids and emergencies...what?

It's not like we want them to have enough money to develop new cures for anything else - they might make those cures expensive to and its much more fair for no one to have access to cures than just people who can afford it.

Xeq - that viewpoint you presented is utterly perverted and inhumane. The reason the US is charged this much is because we can pay it and thus fund other development. I'd rather pay less and have other nations pay more - if you can arrange that quickly please do so but it will require further globalization in order to raise wages in other nations.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Gilead Sciences had a net profit margin of just over 28% for the last quarter and over 26% for 2012. That's not "oh my god, they're evil" territory like you and the article would have folks believe.

You should be smarter than this, X. Look up the company records before promoting such foolishness.

http://www.google.com/finance?cid=656627

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In time, this too shall pass.

Xeq,

Profits on this "win" need to cover all the other research "losses".

Be reasonable, man.

BUT ARA, PROFIT IS A FUNDAMENTAL EVIL

EVILLLLLLLLllllllllll.......

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

84k is about same cost as treating disease for 8-9 years. When you factor in welfare cost because of these people not being able to work, plus the lost tax revenue from them not working the 84k cost will be repaid in four to five year in most cases.

If you don't want to pay that much for a complete cure for one of the few remaining, one of the most serious, (previously) untreatable communicable disease to mankind, feel free to die instead.

An amazing triumph of science.

Yup. No one wants to see decade or more of work go down the drain, but it happens all of the time. Pharma R&D is very expensive, and very slow.

Kudos to Gilead for this one.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

So really, you all are trying to justify that charging $84,000 for something that costs $150-250 to manufacture is "reasonable"?

Wow. This place never ceases to amaze me.

What we're trying to say is that charging $84,000 for something that could have taken over US$1b to discover, research, trial, register, develope is reasonable.

If a generic company who have not had to pay for these developmental costs, choses to charges $84,000 for something that costs a few hundred to manufacturer, then no it's not reasonable.

To give you some brief idea, a 1000 person clinical trial costs roughly US$1-3m (insurance is a killer). Normal registration requirement is for a company to have clinical data on at least 3 randomised trials of 100k person each.

The government will require approx $150k just to apply to have the product looked at by a regulator. The cost of reviewing the submission depends on the number of pages submitted, and it's normal to have a few pallets of folders containing the raw data.

While Hep C is one of the last diseases to be tackled, it's by no means as wide spread as the flu. Therefore a once off CURE will usually cost more than something which requires repeated usage, e.g. tylenol. As you know cost of goods lower with the volume of supply, therefore if the US really wanted to lower the cost, an alternative is always to infect 90% of the US with the virus.

There is a big difference between $150 for the materials, and $150 to 'manufacture'. Especially for heavily regulated drugs like this one...

Instead of spewing meaningless numbers, why don't you spend a little time to research the total cost to get the product to market, including R&D?

Everything has a value beyond the sum of its parts. Perhaps the question shouldn't be what is the value of a few drops of chemical. What is the value of disease free life? I would imagine even someone of less than stellar income capability (another one of those darn subjective values I know) Could reap $84,000 increase wages, less suffering, cost of symptom treatment over the cost of their life. That seems "reasonable" to me. The company are the ones who figured it out, so they get to reap the rewards.

I really believe that someday we are going to have a leukemia cure (actually I believe we have one now, its just the matter of getting the FDA to see that). And when we do, almost no one is going to know about all the long nights, the painful trials, the bureaucracy, and being so frustrated that you almost want to be your own lab rat. I doubt the world will even know the researchers' names, not like they did Dr. Salk a generation or two ago with the last childhood monster. I only have a small window of insight into this -by being friends with one of the researchers- but I think that's got to count for something.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

http://liblog.mayo.edu/2010/01/14/whats-the-body-worth/

Your worth in cost of materials is around $4.50 by that same measure.

I'd think you'd agree things are worth more than the sum of their parts.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I'm not against the company from making a profit, but if they are charging $84k, and let's say they spent $1B..............there are a reported 3.2M chronic cases in the US alone. To break even, they would only have to sell 12k or so.............

I know someone who was infected from a transfusion while in the armed forces. Hopefully he will be able to be treated without having to pay an @ssload. He's older and not exactly rich.

The price will come down as it becomes more widely used. I'm guessing it won't be cheap, not for a while, but I doubt seriously that the $84k will hold.

And remember, 'break even' isn't the goal. Make a killing is the goal. That's what these people do - they devote their lives to developing something that does not currently exist with the goal of eradicating a disease and improving the lives of lots of people. They fail, fail again, and fail again. They are shot down over and over and over. They lose tons of money. When they do succeed, get them a bottle of great Scotch, some loose women, and get them paid.

Then, tackle the next problem.

Sure, it only takes 12k sales at that price to break even -- with the successful project. But that successful project has fifty other projects down the hall that failed or are going to fail with $250m investment down the drain because they didn't work, or they worked but were linked to a 20% increase in Parkinson's symptoms in lab rats, or caused complete renal failure in pigs.

The successes not only have to recoup their own research, but they have to shoulder the burden for all the failures, too, if the business is going to stay afloat and discover new cures in the future. And R&D doesn't come with a crystal ball, so you can't just say "Well, just pick winners."

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I remember the days when we submitted paper. We would fill a tractor trailer for a single new drug application. Nowadays, it's electronic. Some drugs for chronic conditions now require more and longer trials to check things like suicide risk, and we have to look at things like drug abuse liability.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

Well, R&D should take care of that, then.

I see no facts. I see an unverified report. This discussion is predicated entirely on the assumed truth of the unverified report.

Profit is what keeps these discoveries happening. Charging whatever the market will bear is a major aspect of making a profit. Expecting people to invest resources in a nonprofit activity is foolish. Found a charity and make those investments tax deductible contributions and we can talk.

Curing diseases is not altruistic. It is a business. Medicine is a livelihood, not a monastic calling.

That said, Hepatitis C is a slow killer, if it isn't treated, your days are numbered, usually much shorter than you would normally live.

This situation could be one of the strongest sales points for the new ACA required insurance. It is cheaper than treating these expensive to cure diseases yourself.

No, as much as I love a good conspiracy theory I do not think this is one.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Medical research involves a considerable amount of precision instrumentation to comply with federal regulation. You have billion dollar industries supporting medical research with manufacturing and repair of lab equipment.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The guys at Pfizer used to tell stories of weeks of photocopying concluded by having two full climatized trailers of documents each box triple checked heading out to to be looked over by the government.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

That's utterly ridiculous. You know the government never read any of that ****.

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Holy shitsnacks!