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Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

That’s pretty much common knowledge. Most drugs cost a lot to get to market and next to nothing to manufacture. I’m always amazed by how many people have strong opinions about the industry but don’t even know the 101 stuff.

Corporations don’t exist to recoup costs. They exist to make lots of money. That’s why they spend billions coming up with drugs like this and getting them approved.

It’s easy to take the short view of the system (“we need to force them to not make nearly as much as they can on this patent because people are dying”) rather than the long view (“we want companies to spend billions to cure diseases and that means having them make tens or hundreds of billions even though people unnecessarily die until the patent expires because the alternative is no such medicines at all”).

But them’s the options.

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It may be obvious but rarely is it the focus of public discourse on drug companies. Basically the only thing that gets discussed is the apparent naked greed of drug research companies. Frankly it's a miracle that we have private companies bringing novel and life changing drugs to market, and the ability to make obscene profits off these massively speculative investments is probably the main reason.

That's not to dismiss criticism of them, but to me it's obvious, especially if you take a slightly longer view that these companies are in fact making lives better.

The real estate market is a much better example of the harmful effects of terminal greed. Unfortunately so much of the population is in on it now nobody has the fucking balls to stop the music.

I don't think it's even obvious/common knowledge in public discourse, to be honest. (Case in point: this Guardian article doesn't mention it at all, only mentioning the cost of materials and manufacturing.)

To some extent it may not even matter, since the effects of (negative) public opinion are tangible regardless of whether those opinions are fully informed of all the facts. (And even as someone who's aware of a slightly above-average number of facts, my own opinion skews pretty negative.) God knows these companies aren't in the red, trials or no trials; most consumers are just gonna look at the record profits, then back at their pharmacy bill, and go "Hey, wait a minute..."

> this Guardian article doesn't mention R&D at all

This pisses me off so much. Journalists are supposed to do thorough research so they can accurately inform the public. Instead, we see articles like this. How can we have a thoughtful discussion about serious issues when the general public is so misinformed?

> God knows these companies aren't in the red, trials or no trials

Hmmm, I'm not sure. Here's a summary of the finances of the global pharma industry: https://www.ispor.org/docs/default-source/euro2023/poster-is... Note that 55% of the companies made a profit, and the other 45% lost money.

The average profit margin was 20%. On one hand, that's larger than most industries. On the other hand, even if pharma profits were completely eliminated, drugs would only be 20% cheaper...

I always just assumed it’s not part of the discourse because everybody with an interest in the topic already knows. Articles about NVIDIA don’t mention that computers use electricity.

This article is horribly disingenuous and slanted. You could write it about any life saving drug that’s still in patent window. “Pharma company has 99.9% margins while people die unnecessarily” is just business as usual and it sounds maximally evil to phrase it that way and skip the fact that the alternative is no lives saved at all.

> But them’s the options.

Maybe. But I sympathize with people who recoil at the idea of "Extremely cheap life saving medication sold at unaffordable price".

Must it be sold to the world at a price that is only reasonable for the richest countries to pay?

Is there no possible regulatory system that could avoid 20 years of HIV spread and death in poor countries, while still getting the rich countries to pay their fair share?

> Must it be sold to the world at a price that is only reasonable for the richest countries to pay? Is there no possible regulatory system that could avoid 20 years of HIV spread and death in poor countries, while still getting the rich countries to pay their fair share?

Gilead literally did that! They sold Sovaldi (a treatment for Hepatitis C) for $1000/pill in the USA and $5/pill in India. And people hated them for it.

Thats great. I guess their global distribution plan actually has a good chance of being fair after all?

The price was not paid "by a country". It was paid by a random American. Not all Americans are rich, 1000 is unaffordable for quite a lot of people.

For most rich countries, it is payed for collectively by the country because of their healthcare system.

That's great but irrelevant to the topic.

That price was paid for by an American consumer or taxpayers.

Only because Americans insist on their self-harm health insurance system. Americans are both collectively wealthy and have a very small number HIV infections per capita

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