Hacker News Reader

Comment by udba | Hacker News Reader

They say the goal is to help as many people as possible, and that this principle has guided their development and pricing of the drug.

How do they reconcile this principle with the huge price difference between the USA and the rest of the world? Or between the developed world and the developing world?

I assume they are still making a profit selling doses at low costs to developing countries. If the goal is to help as many people like they say, why not extend that pricing to everyone?

It’s disappointing that taxpayers fund the development of these drugs and then get screwed by the same companies when it comes time to make a profit.

View on HN

> I assume they are still making a profit selling doses at low costs to developing countries.

Why would you assume that, instead of assuming that the high prices in the developed world are subsidizing losses elsewhere? (Or, at least, that they are amortizing R&D costs with the prices in the developed world, and doing so allows them to make a profit selling more of it above the marginal cost of producing more.)

The message from the CEO which this is about, says they have the exact same price across the globe, ie no subsidizing losses by that means, or there are no losses.

The US price is in practice the same - they just had to account for the always-expected discount which will push it down to the same as others.

There must be a thousand ways to codify their stated objective 'to help as many people as possible', but I can't imagine why you'd think a completely flat pricing structure would be optimal for any of them.

Read it. They dont make the drug for developing nations. they let generics do that, presumably because it would be bad to try to prevent it (if possible at all). i think it mostly makes sense. but it does show they are afraid of negotiating with governments which is why usa is getting punished for being all private.

They’re not selling the drugs to developing countries and won’t be for a while. There simply isn’t enough stock to go around.

> with the huge price difference between the USA and the rest of the world

That doesn't really matter as the Trump administration has bought essentially the whole production capacity of Remdesivir for July, August and September.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/us-buys-up-w...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com