I have the perfect solution. When you calculate our per-capita income, exclude the top 1%!
(NEWSER) – The FDA only approved Sovaldi in December, but the hepatitis C treatment is already setting records, with as much as $10 billion in sales expected in the first year alone. And why not? It has few side effects, cures 90% of patients, and, oh yeah, costs $1,000 a day. That price tag is causing turmoil throughout the health care system, CBS reports. Doctors can’t resist prescribing it, but several insurers might see a more than 10% drop in earnings because of it, one analyst tells the Wall Street Journal. There are an estimated 3.2 million hepatitis C sufferers in the US, and if all those eligible for Sovaldi took it, the price could be as much as $27 billion, one investment bank calculated, according to Forbes.
A lot of that burden would fall on taxpayers, because hepatitis C patients are often veterans, prisoners, uninsured, or on Medicaid. Several Democratic Congressmen recently sent a letter demanding that Sovaldi’s maker, Gilead, explain the price tag—especially given that it costs 99% less in hepatitis-ridden Egypt; Congress has no power to alter the price, however. Gilead says its prices ($84,000 for a full course of treatment in the US) key off a country’s per-capita income, and argues that it’s still a good deal long-term, because it cures patients in 12 weeks. UPI points out that some hepatitis C sufferers ultimately require a liver transplant, which costs upward of $175,000.
So, doing some quick math, that’s only 32 years to treat the 3.2 million sufferers in the US. That’s only 3.2 Trillion (with a ‘T’) dollars. I wonder if that’s enough to pay off their R&D? So Americans pay for treatment for the rest of the world, plus. Republican logic.
Gilead just flat-out says that there price is based on the buyer’s income? They just say it? Out loud? They’ve stopped even pretending that price has something to do with cost of production?
While I wasn’t looking, it’s become an ethical business practice to take people for as much as they’ve got. What’s next? “That’s a nice little house (business, country) you got there. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”
How’s it possible that this stuff happens so fast? You wake up one morning and the Mafia has taken over.