PrintSmith wrote: for the sake of argment, let us presume that those figures are accurate - typically. Now let's talk specifically about this one, shall we? What did it cost to ressearch? What was it's cost to submit to the FDA trials? What does each batch cost to synthesize, package, quality control, distribute, test for purity and safety? What does it cost the company to insure themselve against the future lawsuits? What did it cost them as far as captial investments for the manufacturing facility to produce this specific drug?
Unless those questions can be answered, it is bit premature to make the presumptions you have made, isn't it? I mean, I know that the Rules for Radicals outlines the mehods being employed here, and that the ends justify any means, but don't you think there's a saturation point at which people tire of hearing such wild speculations soley for political reasons? We all know there's an election coming up that the party of Democrats are rightly very worried about, but don't you think it a tad early to start the scorched earth part of the campaign?
Yet once again Printsmith has to resort to his pedantic smears rather than present a single fact to back up his out of touch assertions. A recent study by researchers in the UK found that the cost of producing similar pharmaceuticals were in the range of $100 - $150 per 12 week treatment as compared to the $84,000 price tag for a course of Solvadi treatment.
But Andrew Hill, a researcher in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Liverpool, says $84,000 per cure is too much, based on his estimate of Gilead's cost to produce the drug. "Even when we were very conservative [with our estimate], the cost of a course of these treatments would be on the order of $150 to $250 per person," Hill says. He questions whether the $84,000 price tag represents "a fair profit. "Hill estimated the cost of producing Sovaldi by comparing it to similar antiviral drugs used to treat HIV, which cost about a $1 per gram to make. "The amazing thing with hep C is you only need a few grams of these drugs to cure the infection," Hill says. "You need 10 grams or 30 grams of drugs."
The COO of Gilead, who refused to divulge the cost of R & D for Solvadi, stated that the pricing was based on comparing the price of the Solvadi treatment to the cost of liver replacement of $300,000.
"When you talk to them about the long-term benefits, they recognize they're not going to have to worry as much about liver transplants and other care they're going to have to give," Milligan told Bloomberg. A new liver costs about $300,000 in the U.S., and that's before factoring in the price of drugs to make a transplant work. "For most of these plans, the risk/benefit seems to be positive, based on our conversations."
Congress has requested Gilead to provide information to justify their pricing but Gilead has refused so far to provide any such information.
Further, Gilead is selling this drug for about $10.00 per pill outside the US.
So let see if Printsmith is able to provide any facts, or if he continues to use pedantic smears as usual.
I believe Dog has addressed the issue a number of times....what is curious to me is that you
(PS) do not care to refute the above....MANY others have questioned the price point and
have NOT been given a satisfactory answer to the question....HOW MUCH did it cost to
bring this to market?.....WHY this particular price point?.....there is push back and there
SHOULD be....(because we are ALL going to pay for THIS pricing decision by Gilead)....
We know that it cost Gilead at least $11 Billion to bring the compound to market. That was the price they paid when they bought out the company that started the development of Solvadi and was going through the first phases of FDA approval when Gilead purchased the company. It would not be unreasonable to conclude that million more have been spent since that acquisition in 2011 and now to complete the process and obtain FDA approval for the drug.
What was the figure Dog was trying to establish a bit earlier in the thread - something in the $300 million range? Seems like he was just a bit off this time - the figure he used only represents about 3% of the cost to Gilead to bring this to market. And you will notice that Dog never directly answered the question, nor did you for that matter. No, instead he tried to resort to name calling in an attempt to deflect from the true cost to Gilead to bring this particular drug to the market.
When Gilead purchased the patent for this drug they not only paid $11 Billion for it, they also took a financial hit in their stock price because many believed the acquisition too risky. They also took a hit on their earnings for the past couple of years to pay off the debt they assumed in order to make that purchase, a portion of which is still on their books by the way, which means that, like the federal debt, interest has to be paid, which raises the total cost of bringing the drug to market beyond $11 Billion.
None of which, by the way, even begins to address the point that paying $1K per pill for 84 pills to cure the disease isn't going to wind up saving insurance companies, MediCare, MediCaid and thus ultimately every person being forced to engage in commerce of the federal government's choosing, a lot of money when compared to the total costs they face today to deal with Hep C including the inevitable costs to treat the cirrohis of the livers, liver transplants and liver cancers that result from the ineffective treatments currently available. Do you want to address that point or not home?
homeagain wrote: Arlen.....NO ONE mentioned free....what WAS brought forward was the exorbitant expectation
of $1,000 a pill.....
How much is your life worth? $84,000 to me is cheap for the life of my wife or any of my children. Sounds to me as if your life is not worth that much to you.
Is the life of your mother worth $84,000? How about one of your kids? Sounds like a bargain to me!
Let us consider how many people have Hep C. Maybe not very many, so the price of the pill has to be high enough to at least recoup the cost of development. Reckon?
Arlen it would help if you knew just a little about what you were commenting on. There are estimated to be about 4 million people in the Union infected with Hep C. If all of them were treated with this cure, which we know all of them won't be, the total revenue, not total profit, would be in excess of $330 Billion just to treat the existing cases, let alone the ones that add to the existing total. Globally that number is estimated to be as high as 500 million.
Now, you and I both know that Gilead's patent will expire long before even the 4 million currently infected with Hep C are cured, let alone the half a billion globally, but revenue for this cure is expected to run about $10 billion a year at the current cost point.
That, too, is irrelevant when compared to the costs of dealing with Hep C annually in the Union today.
Moreover, the average lifetime cost for hepatitis C, in the absence of liver transplant, has been estimated to be about $100,000 for individual patients. Assuming that 80% of the 4.5 million Americans believed to be infected develop chronic liver disease, the total lifetime cost for this group (3.6 million) will be a staggering $360 billion in today's dollars. Assuming an estimated survival of 40 years, the annual health care costs for the affected U.S. population with chronic hepatitis C may be as high as $9 billion.
http://www.epidemic.org/thefacts/theepi ... CareCosts/
So by curing the disease at a cost of $84K, the taxpayers are saved $16K just in the lifetime costs associated with treating the disease. Add in the savings associated with getting rid of the need for liver transplants because the disease is cured well before that stage is reached and you are talking literally hundreds of billions of dollars that are saved by insurance companies, MediCare, MediCaid and ultimately by each and every one of us who are being compelled using the force of government to participate in the commerce of the government's choosing even with each and every pill sold costing $1K each. That, in return, will lower the cost of providing care to everyone regardless of their ability to pay for it, even at a cost of $1K per dose.
It seems a bit ridiculous to complain that Gilead isn't saving us enough money, doesn't it?
PrintSmith wrote: We know that it cost Gilead at least $11 Billion to bring the compound to market. That was the price they paid when they bought out the company that started the development of Solvadi and was going through the first phases of FDA approval when Gilead purchased the company. It would not be unreasonable to conclude that million more have been spent since that acquisition in 2011 and now to complete the process and obtain FDA approval for the drug.
What was the figure Dog was trying to establish a bit earlier in the thread - something in the $300 million range? Seems like he was just a bit off this time - the figure he used only represents about 3% of the cost to Gilead to bring this to market. And you will notice that Dog never directly answered the question, nor did you for that matter. No, instead he tried to resort to name calling in an attempt to deflect from the true cost to Gilead to bring this particular drug to the market.
When Gilead purchased the patent for this drug they not only paid $11 Billion for it, they also took a financial hit in their stock price because many believed the acquisition too risky. They also took a hit on their earnings for the past couple of years to pay off the debt they assumed in order to make that purchase, a portion of which is still on their books by the way, which means that, like the federal debt, interest has to be paid, which raises the total cost of bringing the drug to market beyond $11 Billion.
None of which, by the way, even begins to address the point that paying $1K per pill for 84 pills to cure the disease isn't going to wind up saving insurance companies, MediCare, MediCaid and thus ultimately every person being forced to engage in commerce of the federal government's choosing, a lot of money when compared to the total costs they face today to deal with Hep C including the inevitable costs to treat the cirrohis of the livers, liver transplants and liver cancers that result from the ineffective treatments currently available. Do you want to address that point or not home?
Really, Printsmith, are you really trying to tell us that the only asset that Gilead received from the purchaser of Pharmasett was Solivad? Because apparently Solivad had numerous other drugs underway from their research of which Solivad was only one. Further, Gilead did not just receive the patent that covered Solivad but covers many other prospective and potentially lucrative drugs. Additionally,Pharmasett had numerous other drugs in the pipeline.
Just because Gilead paid that sum for a highly regarded biotech research company, that does not mean that it cost $11 billion to "develop" one of the products of that company. It simply means that Gilead is "betting" $11 billion that Solivad and the other drugs that will evolve from the Pharmasett research will be worth more than they are betting. It has nothing to do with how much Solivad cost to develop, it is solely based on how much revenue Gilead expects to make from selling $1000 pills.
Business 101
"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you can be batman. Then always be batman." Unknown
By any objective metric, Sovaldi is a good value. The drug costs less on an absolute basis than Incivek (~$100,000 per year), which is reimbursed without question, and is an even better deal if one applies a “cost per cure” methodology (A recent Mt. Sinai study shows a $189,000 cost per cure for Incivek-containing regimens.) Moreover, remember that the government pays nowhere near list price; Medicaid receives a mandatory 23.1% discount on branded drug prices (Sovaldi is covered by privately-administered Medicare Part D plans for patients over 65 years old).
You want to keep on harping about how much this is going to be costing taxpayers Dog, or are you now going to abandon that one given how hollow it is . . .
By any objective metric, Sovaldi is a good value. The drug costs less on an absolute basis than Incivek (~$100,000 per year), which is reimbursed without question, and is an even better deal if one applies a “cost per cure” methodology (A recent Mt. Sinai study shows a $189,000 cost per cure for Incivek-containing regimens.) Moreover, remember that the government pays nowhere near list price; Medicaid receives a mandatory 23.1% discount on branded drug prices (Sovaldi is covered by privately-administered Medicare Part D plans for patients over 65 years old).
You want to keep on harping about how much this is going to be costing taxpayers Dog, or are you now going to abandon that one given how hollow it is . . .
Since the US taxpayer through Medicaid will be paying $84000 per treatment for the very same treatment that Gilead is offering in Egypt, CHINA AND INDIA for about $800, yes, Gilead is overcharging the taxpayer and insurance companies. I do not consider overcharging the US taxpayers by a sum of $75,000 per treatment to be "hollow". Gilead will be overcharging for the treatments to the tune of billions of dollars in the US, a significant amount borne by the US taxpayer. While the $84,000 may be less than a liver transplant, it is still a huge cost over and above what Gilead charges for the same treatments to the governments of China, India, Egypt and who know how many other countries.
Even in the UK, Gilead is selling the same treatment for 1/3 less than in the US. So yes, the taxpayer is getting ripped off. Particularly when about 1/2 of all hepatitis patients in the US receive public funding for their healthcare. Should not a US corporation offer pricing in the US comparable to what it offers the very same product in foreign countries? Particularly when the pricing is not based on product development costs, but on what the company thinks it can get away with since the taxpayer is footing the bill.
"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you can be batman. Then always be batman." Unknown
Just can't help yourself, lying is so ingrained into your being that you can't even stop yourself from lying when provided with the facts that disprove your lie. Look at my post that you quoted Dog. In it you will find that by federal law Medicaid receives a 23.1% discount on branded drugs so Medicaid won't even be paying the amount you claim the taxpayer is going to be overcharged and yet you still seek to distort the cost to taxpayers.
Each and every course of treatment with Solavdi will save taxpayers 16% compared to what they are currently paying, without squawking I might add, for Incivek and cure more of them of their disease than Incivek does. It will do that over a shorter period of time and while significantly enhancing the quality of life experienced by those who have the disease.
Now let's take a look at why the cost is less in India, Egypt and China for a moment. Might that have something to do with the governments in those countries threatening to revoke Gilead's patent rights? Are you willing to do the same thing to the rule of law here to achieve that outcome? I mean, I realize that according to the Alinsky model the ends justify any and all means, but is that truly the case? Are you wllling to sacrifice research into curing diseases in exchage for abandoning the rule of law here? Do you think that Gilead, or anyone else for that matter, is going to be willing to invest billions into curing not only Hep C, but cancers without patent protections on their results?
The actual cost to taxpayers here is not much different than the cost to taxpayers in the UK. Medicaid gets a 23.1% discount by statutory law and Gilead has already said that there is an additional discount that has been negotiated for the VA. Kaiser also has negotiated a price reduction for those that they insure because they recognize the benefit to their company long term in exchange for providing the drug to their patients now. The same metric applies across the board. Not only will providing this cure save money over Incivek now, it will save on the future costs of treating cirrohis of the liver, and cancers of the liver and liver transplants that result from not treating Hep C earlier. That was one of the reasons Congress felt it necessary to compel everyone to purchase insurance using the force of government, wasn't it? To ensure that everyone would insured and have access to medical care and in so doing reduce the costs of providing healthcare longterm?
PrintSmith wrote: Do you think that Gilead, or anyone else for that matter, is going to be willing to invest billions into curing not only Hep C, but cancers without patent protections on their results?
No, regardless the risk of capital, those who are capable of developing these important drugs should do it merely for the greater good of the collective, even if it means the high probability of bankruptcy... according to unicorn ranchers anyway.
The left is angry because they are now being judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
