Gilead’s update on response to COVID-19 using Remdesivir | Hacker News Reader

Gilead’s update on response to COVID-19 using Remdesivir

gilead.com

19 pointsjancurn6 comments

If approved for treatment, I hope this is fairly priced, given that the CDC predicts 40M infections in the US.

Just to be clear, pricing ultimately comes down to insurance companies, middlemen taking a cut, and a government mandate that can pressure the ecosystem into acting in the public interest in times of a pandemic. So please make a reasonable profit to continue developing treatments, but DON'T get greedy, especially applies to insurance companies and middlemen whose entire role is financial engineering adding next to nothing in value

Or that some governments apply an eminent-domain like approach, and start manufacturing a generic version. This is not the time for Gilead, or any other company, to make a buck out of a world-wide emergency.

I'd rather have a sustainable Gilead, with a strong moral compass that prices things fairly, to invent the next antiviral.

But the middlemem and insurance companies add ZERO value - invent nothing, treat/cure no one. They're just a leech in the system, and they definitely shouldn't profit from a pandemic

Sure, that sounds nice, but corporations with a strong moral compass (and pharma ones, at that), are not exactly commonplace.

If they get too greedy they risk China and others just copying it. The situation would allow for that. If they price it fairly, they can make a lot of money by selling hundreds of million doses within a few months. So there's a strong incentive to price it very reasonably.

> Just to be clear, pricing ultimately comes down to...

Ultimately it comes down to regulations. A company's (pharma, insurance, middleman) job is to make as much money as it can in the legal framework. If you let companies do whatever they want then they'll do exactly that. Their goal is to be as greedy as legally possible.

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