So, Hep C cured.

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Araysar

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Xequecal_sl said:
Because the rest of the world won't pay $80. The only thing preventing Americans from getting the treatment course for $5 is our patent and copyright laws, which don't apply anywhere else. Europe's socialized health care systems will offer this company the manufacturing cost plus 50%. They wont give them a price that lets them recoup development costs. They don't have to. If they don't take the deal, then Europe will just rip off the formula and make it themselves. Once you have the actual pills in hand they're more trivially copiable than software. China will definitely just straight up rip the formula off, and probably will sell the pills super cheap to everyone else if we don't beat that price.

Its not fair, but its reality. Now, I don't think big pharma is totally on the level at all, as no industry makes 25% profit fairly, but claiming they're gouging at 10x-100x of a fair price is absurd.
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Ok, so lets say we let them sell it at 80K+ per treatment. It will take about 2 million patients (out of 150,000,000) to break even, do you think they should drop their price then?
 
Xequecal

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Araysar_sl said:
Ok, so lets say we let them sell it at 80K+ per treatment. It will take about 2 million patients (out of 150,000,000) to break even, do you think they should drop their price then?
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That breaks even with the total costs of this specific drug. They also have to recoup their losses of all the ones they spent billions on and didn't pan out.
 
Siddar

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Araysar_sl said:
Lets say they double that and charge $150 for treatment instead of $75.

Why do they want to charge $80K-$150K for a treatment that would cost $150 and still net them over 10 billion in profit?

Lets say we let them charge 80K for treatment, do you think they should drop their prices once they recoup their investment?
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Because third world Africans cant pay $150 but your healthcare plan can pay 84k for the 1% of Americans that have Hep C when it means saving 216k in expense per Hep C patient treated longterm.
 
Siddar

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Araysar_sl said:
Ok, so lets say we let them sell it at 80K+ per treatment. It will take about 2 million patients (out of 150,000,000) to break even, do you think they should drop their price then?
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No they should drop prices after they make there first 100% ROI. Then slowly drop prices until they hit 1000% ROI. Then after that walk away from there patent and let drug be sold at cost while kicking a few billion in profits back into a NGO to lead a worldwide campaign to eradicate Hep C from the face of the earth.
 
OneofOne

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Siddar_sl said:
Then after that walk away from there patent and let drug be sold at cost while kicking a few billion in profits back into a NGO to lead a worldwide campaign to eradicate Hep C from the face of the earth.
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And WE'RE the ones living in fantasy land? Gotcha /wink
 
Siddar

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OneofOne_sl said:
And WE'RE the ones living in fantasy land? Gotcha /wink
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Care to explain?

3.000.000 x 84.000 = 254 billion. 1000% ROI of 11 billion is 121 billion. So what I suggested is taking about 50% the potential profits from US alone and then walking away.

Is my fantasy that you dont think the amount of money i suggest is acheavible are that you don't think those involved would be willing to walk away at just a 1000% ROI?
 
OneofOne

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I'm just laughing at your naivete. Also find the below statement funny, as you sit here deciding what a good profit is.

Siddar_sl said:
I see no reason why ether you are anyone else should be able to tell someone else how much profit they can make on something they own.
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Also, one of the biggest issues I have is with patents re: heathcare shit. If a non-profit was working on the same research, and ended up with the same cure, say, a few months later - due to patent law the second company is shit out of luck. Say you have company A which will charge $1m per cure, and entity B which will toss out the cure info/recipe to any drug maker/government who asks. Whoever makes the discovery (I use this term intentionally) first wins. Fuck. That. That is not a system I can or ever will support.

Also, stop bringing up Apple or any other fucking company that has jack to do with drugs. Live-saving drugs and consumer products will NEVER EVER EVER be the same thing. Ever.
 
iannis

iannis

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It's not that I disagree with trying to find a fair price for the product. If they choose to put a price on this, which is legitimately their choice to make, they do deserve a fair one. I do disagree somewhat strongly that the price they have arrived at is fair and I find the method they used to arrive at the price (most likely, i'm not sitting in on fucking board meetings, but based on the way the spokesmen defend the price and the secondhand defenses of concept) most likely cynical, inhumane, and defined almost entirely by avarice.

Even the Jews.. the JEWS... said it was socially acceptable to kill a moneylender who charged more than 30%. They believed it enough to write it down. And that's just some dude selling money, not some dude selling life.
 
iannis

iannis

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It seems that a disbelief in evil is often a selfish and convenient one. You never have to believe it's possible that you can do wrong.

The best trick the devil ever pulled.
 
B_Mizzle

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Because they get jaundice a few times before they die and end up in the emergency room and then most likely an IMC for a few weeks.
 
Qhue

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I am okay with pharma companies recouping their development costs by charging premium prices for patented drugs as this profit engine directly impacts the entire research and development cycle. This, however, is so far beyond the cost of development that it really raises the question of how suitable the current patent system is and the lack of mechanisms for any sort of price regulation in exchange for governmental patent protection.

Furthermore the company in question did NOT develop the drug. They bought the rights to the drug when they acquired Pharmasset for $11billion and then shepherded it through the FDA approval process. Thus they are using the "well we paid $11Billion for this...we deserve to make money!!" as an excuse when they paid 86% over market value for the company in the first place.

At what point does one say that the patent holder has abused the social contract of the patent itself and is no longer due any legal protection?
 
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Numbers_sl

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I remember when this article came out last year saying that big Pharma hasn't developed many useful treatments lately. It's all about profit.Drugs companies putting profit ahead of medical discoveries, warn scientists - Health News - Health Families - The Independent

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Donald Light from the University of Medicine of New Jersey and Joel Lexchin from York University in Toronto say the situation has remained the same for 50 years. The incentives for drug development are wrong and have skewed the behaviour of the industry.

"This is the real innovation crisis: pharmaceutical research and development turns out mostly minor variations on existing drugs and most new drugs are not superior on clinical measures. [They] have also produced an epidemic of serious adverse reactions that have added to national healthcare costs," they say.

More is spent on marketing (25 per cent of revenues) than on discovering new molecules (1.3 per cent). Drug industry claims that the cost of bringing a new drug to market is ?1bn and is unsustainable are exaggerated, they claim. Research and development costs did rise substantially between 1995 and 2010 by $34.2bn (?21.9bn), they concluded, but revenues increased six times faster - by $200.4bn.
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Kuriin

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Siddar_sl said:
Because third world Africans cant pay $150 but your healthcare plan can pay 84k for the 1% of Americans that have Hep C when it means saving 216k in expense per Hep C patient treated longterm.
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1% Where the fuck did you get that number? You do realize people who had blood transfusions and exchanged needles back in the day are now experiencing the effects of cirrhosis? Sorry, KID, HepC is in epidemic status right now. It is not 1%.
 
ZyyzYzzy

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Not to defend 1955717375727% profit margin or whatever it is, but the cost to Gilead will be slightly over 11billion because they still need to produce and QC test all the drug they make and pay off doctors to prescribe it still down the road when a generic is available.
 
Siddar

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Kuriin_sl said:
1% Where the fuck did you get that number? You do realize people who had blood transfusions and exchanged needles back in the day are now experiencing the effects of cirrhosis? Sorry, KID, HepC is in epidemic status right now. It is not 1%.
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Link in first post of this thread.

More than 3 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C, and perhaps 170 million people have the disease worldwide. By comparison, about 1.1 million Americans have HIV, which has infected about 34 million people globally.
 
D

Dabamf_sl

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Araysar_sl said:
Question for you: So do you think all bottled water companies can get together in America and charge $10 per 20 oz bottle of water??
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Ok so patents=collusion? Also, patents=monopoly? Patents=dishwashing detergent, yes or no?

Lolololol

All the "but medicine is different" people, here's a thought experiment. Don't answer because I'm done responding to this thread. I made a mistake and accidentally got into a real argument on the internet and now feel foolish for having done so. Just think about it for yourself. Say Apple spends x years and y dollars developing some kind of 3d touchscreen technology (like in Minority Report). Samsung reverse engineers it and creates their own, but patents prevent them from releasing it. Ask yourself (1)who owns the technology and (2) what are the patents protecting? If samsung can sell theirs right away, apple will still make buckets of money, after all. Finally, (3)why would that scenario be bad for the consumer in the long term?

If you can't comprehend the answer to that last question, stop here because your understanding is insufficient.

Final question: how is health care different from other things in a way that the reasoning for (3) no longer applies?

Again, I don't care about your answer. Once we adopt a position publicly we are committed to defending it. So don't defend it. Think about it for yourself
 
wormie

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Dabamf_sl said:
Ok so patents=collusion? Also, patents=monopoly? Patents=dishwashing detergent, yes or no?

Lolololol

All the "but medicine is different" people, here's a thought experiment. Don't answer because I'm done responding to this thread. I made a mistake and accidentally got into a real argument on the internet and now feel foolish for having done so. Just think about it for yourself. Say Apple spends x years and y dollars developing some kind of 3d touchscreen technology (like in Minority Report). Samsung reverse engineers it and creates their own, but patents prevent them from releasing it. Ask yourself (1)who owns the technology and (2) what are the patents protecting? If samsung can sell theirs right away, apple will still make buckets of money, after all. Finally, (3)why would that scenario be bad for the consumer in the long term?

If you can't comprehend the answer to that last question, stop here because your understanding is insufficient.

Final question: how is health care different from other things in a way that the reasoning for (3) no longer applies?

Again, I don't care about your answer. Once we adopt a position publicly we are committed to defending it. So don't defend it. Think about it for yourself
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Ok thought about it. You are still a retard and since you do not care, no explanation is needed. Good day.
 
TheBeagle

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Ya I performed his thought experiment a couple times and couldn't grasp why the Samsung stealing an Apple patent analogy destroys the 'medicine is different' argument. If anything it only reinforced the fact that the production of life saving drugs is absolutely nothing at all like an electronics company that makes expensive toys for grown ups. I always thought Dabamf was a pretty bright and reasonable dude, but his posts in this thread are terribad.
 
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