Hacker News Reader

Comment by bdzr | Hacker News Reader

> Now, that said... is $42,000/yr a reasonable price? Fuck no. On a purely humanitarian level, it's unacceptable, and if we're just looking at Gilead's bottom line, I'm sure they could price this drug for a whole lot less and still recoup the cost of clinical trials (and then some).

Is it unacceptable if the company decides not to make the drug in the first place? The default alternative isn't that we have the drug for less, it's not having it at all.

View on HN

This development should just be funded by the government.

Why not subsidise the developed drug instead of taking upfront risk? Government can easily pay trillions of people money with no result for people.

It’s pretty obvious - it’s cheaper to fund research than to allow a company to price risk. I think this makes sense as science is at a point where the low hanging fruit is picked and new drugs are more expensive and sometimes less of an improvement than what we saw in the past.

Pharmaceutical firms exist because the US and other governments fund basic research, it’s not an alien concept.

AFAIK, government efficiency is at 1/3 or less of commercial.

Probably still cheaper than paying 1000x markups on thing like repatented chemo!

That would be nice, but it isn't happening right now. Until the government starts funding drug development, do you agree it's reasonable for pharma companies to develop drugs and then sell them at high prices to recoup their costs?

Looking at things like food recommendations and the recent false start was it with Alzheimer, I wonder if the private model isn't in any case better. Government funded programs likely would have one or few sources of funding and this funding would be controlled by biases of who ever happen to be in the lead. Even if their decisions on directions to take research was wrong...

Private companies betting their own money might limit options of what is targeted, but on other hand I think end up trying more of different possibilities.

Does not mean we should not also spend money on government funded research programs with those drugs produced at near cost.

Elaborate on “default alternative”? Aren’t there many alternatives? Why is one a default?

The option of doing nothing would be the default since it doesn’t cost them any time, people, or resources. Any other option requires sustained positive actions on their part. There are many versions, alternatives, to what that course would take, but it wouldn’t be the default since they require work.

They are already not making drugs for any number of diseases and illnesses, that’s the default. To change course on those they need a good reason.

I’ve been not inventing drugs for 44 consecutive years. All this time I didn’t even know I was just defaulting.

Huh. I suppose I meant that if we as a society decide we don’t want them to charge a lot for drugs, an alternative is publicly funded drug research. “Not making drugs” doesn’t strike me as an alternative solution.

The default alternative is not charging obscene prices.

Right. With the default alternative there is no treatment to charge obscene prices for.

But of course this is in itself a choice of governments.

They could say that for drugs, unless the drug is produced and sold at a reasonable price, the company could lose its patent rights, just as trademark rights must be exercised in order to remain in effect.

These situations are not dealing with natural laws and they can be changed.

What incentive would there be for a drug company to undertake a drug program that has a negative expected value? Ultimately, someone has to pay the cost, society just decides if and where.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com