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Comment by fiatmoney | Hacker News Reader

So why isn't someone smuggling bottles' worth back to the US until the price equilibriates? That's a pretty nice profit margin even for the illegal drug trade, and the US can't even reliably keep things like heroin from being readily shipped on a retail basis.

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Is that really considered smuggling? If the whole 12 week treatment costs $84000 in the US and apparently $336 in India according to the article, you could take a nice vacation to India with your family, get your bottle of 84 pills there, and save $75k to $80k. A smart insurance company would cover it.

That's assuming the insurance company is fine paying whatever the vacation to India costs.

It's really their own $75k they're saving...

Not if they weren't going to pay that anyway.

The primary distribution channels, pharmacies, want nothing to do with grey market suppliers. There's also not a lot of direct price sensitivity. People with 3rd party insurance have relatively inexpensive copays. The poor have access to Medicaid. In neither case are you paying full-freight out of pocket.

So you've got no mass distribution channels and a user base that is shielded from the true cost. People do try, drug co's all have "anti-diversion" strategies, but it's pretty well contained.

Because this isn't the type of drug that one would buy off of craigslist? It's the insurance companies who are in war with big pharma.

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