To Sell a $1,000 Pill for $10 Without Losing Money | Hacker News Reader

To Sell a $1,000 Pill for $10 Without Losing Money

bloomberg.com

29 pointsjakobsbiz13 comments

I was born with Hepatitis C. The whole situation is frustrating to me. For me in the US, insurance won't cover the drug unless I am in a category that is considered to be in great need of it (liver damage, etc.). So at this point I have to wait until my liver starts being damaged or the price comes down.

I understand the need for rationing given the pricing, but it's still difficult for me knowing that a cure exists but there's no way for me to obtain it. Perhaps I should consider medical tourism...

EDIT: After reading the prior authorization guidelines more, looks like I would be approved if I took up intravenous drug abuse or sex with high-risk males! Looks like I have other options :)

I think we have a great new business plan. Sell $300 heroin to people who need this drug so they can get it for half price!

Looking at Pharmacy Checker, Offshore, which I believe ships from India, seems to have it for $74/pill (in odd quantities that don't seem to evenly divide what would be needed). Still lots of money and you have to worry about customs arbitrarily deciding to cause trouble (my impression is that is rare but can happen).

It looks like round trip airfare to India is available for under $1000, so that seems like the least expensive option. Wow, so travel to India costs less than what they sell one pill for in the US, and you can get the full 12 week supply for less than the second pill (the least expensive version of the full supply would get you just over half a pill in the US).

Good luck, I hope something works out for you.

Beware that Gilead is requiring doctors to check passports before treating people in India. Not sure how much it's enforced, but that was reported a few months ago.

Short version - The fellow responsible for licensing the $1K Hepatitis C treatment to generic companies in poorer countries talks about the challenges in getting them out there, and making sure they don't cut into business back home. IOW, keeping control of a patent by making sure the folks who are likely to rip you off anyway make more money by working with you.

That's actually a really good summary.

Gilead has a lot of experience with differential pricing for developing countries. They have a large HIV portfolio and started doing this a long time ago.

"According to Doctors Without Borders, which is critical of drug-pricing policies, it costs Gilead $100 to manufacture the 90 pills in the 12-week course."

Sounds more like a $1.11 pill to me. And it seems pretty straightforward to sell something at (a minimum) 90% margin and make money.

That's purely the cost of goods. It completely ignore the cost of R&D.

It's like saying "oh, that CD I just bought only costs $0.30 to press, so $3 is a 90% margin". It's not. You can't ignore the millions that went into recording the music.

Very interesting. So, can China not just reverse engineer this pill, and distribute a generic version of it anyway?

I was wondering the same thing? Why couldn't another company just make a generic and sell it if there is such a high demand.

May be they have good know-how how do this in good level of cost and price. Or may be this is completely unnecessary for them (the china government). Normally if you have pharmaceutical generics comapnies they have big portfolio of many generics drugs ("they do not keep eggs in one basket and diversification also). Create company which have only one product and sell only to China market in my opinion is pointless.

Well, I assume Gilead is allowing Chinese companies to manufacturer authorized generics at a price in line with average wages. So people in China already have access.

The other concern emerging economies like China have is they are already developing their own brand name/patented drugs. If they don't respect the US/EU patents, they can't really complain when the US/EU doesn't respect theirs. The US market makes up almost 2/3 of the western drug market, so it would be a huge lose for China.

Yes, that could be also good explanation. I assume also that China, India etc. have completely different genetic population than europe populationes. This is important at clinical trials or bioequivalence study because some drugs substances could work differently for peoples form Asia and Europe. Pharma companies run trailes e.g in China and sell drugs only for regional area (because it work) this drug will be ineffective in Europe or could to do more damage.

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