It would have been nice to read at least a little bit about the development process of Sovaldi, how much money was spent developing it over how many years, what were the risks it would fall through and be worthless, are more or less people surviving HepC because of Sovaldi, etc.
From what I understand, Sovaldi saves money over the long term, it actually costs less then competing treatments. It's just gives people a mental block because it's packaged into a magic little pill.
Funny, you would think easy to take, less side effects, and lower cost would make for good headlines and a higher price. Maybe if they packaged it into 15 pills a day people wouldn't be as upset. Like Beats putting weights into their headphones to make them feel more expensive.
Sovaldi sounds to me like exactly the kind of grand slam we want our pharma industry hitting more often. High risk science developing straight up cures that work for the vast majority of patients who take them, offered at a lower cost than the current treatment regimen, with fewer side effects. The age old joke is that pharma develops treatments, never cures. Well, here's a honest cure and it sounds like it's priced relatively appropriately for what they've accomplished.
If you want a lot more drugs that are this effective against nasty and prolific diseases like HepC, then I think you want public and private insurance paying a lot for Sovaldi.
One obvious way to make it cheaper is if there was a way to get countries other than the USA to pay their fair share for the breakthrough.