
80k dollars almost certainly cures hepatitis C - tbarbugli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofosbuvir
======
downandout
Interestingly, according the the manufacturer, they will be offering it in
Egypt at 99% off of this price.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/21/us-hepatitis-
egypt...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/21/us-hepatitis-egypt-gilead-
sciences-idUSBREA2K1VF20140321)

Apparently the price is...whatever they think you, combined with your
insurance company, can come up with.

------
johnward
My wife works for a doctor that handles hep c patients. We had a recent rise
in drug activity in my area and she sees new patients coming in all the time.
I can't really believe how common hep c is. This is good news and gives some
hope that maybe it will be affordable one day. Also medicaid covers this
treatment from what I understand.

------
brohoolio
I know one treatment I was looking at used to cost $20 a dose. Now is $1500
for a dose and treatment costs totals $30,000.

While I understand innovation costs money, some of the pricing models around
pharma is ridiculous.

------
tbarbugli
should we be happy about the invention or mad because of another example of
corporation grief?

~~~
kseistrup
I'm sure people infected with Hepatitis C are happy about this.

~~~
eximius
I'm sure people with poor health insurance with Hepatitis C are a little
upset. I doubt they could get an insurance company to pay for the better drug.

~~~
maxerickson
The existing treatment is a $150,000 liver transplant. In addition to being
more expensive than the new drug, it isn't as good a treatment (among other
things, anti rejection medications for life).

This drug really brings to focus the various issues and interests involved in
developing new drugs. It's a better, cheaper treatment (that cures!) and still
the price tag is easy to balk at.

~~~
masklinn
liver transplant is not a treatment of hep c, as far as I know, it's a
treatment of liver failure as a consequence of chronic hep c (~30% of chronic
hep c patients end up in with cirrhosis), the patient still has hep c.

------
melling
Previous posts:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7529435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7529435)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7583655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7583655)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7628233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7628233)

~~~
dang
Thanks. I think we'll bury this item as a dupe.

All: Also, please don't editorialize titles. It's against the site guidelines.

------
toastedzergling
It should be noted that this isn't an option if you're aleady late stage and
have cirrhosis of the liver. Hep C isn't really curable past the point where
they can longer administer to you the interferon it is mixed it, which
requires a relatively healthy liver to handle.

------
qwerta
Developing countries will abolish medical patents and will start making
generic replacements.

~~~
Carioca
There have been laws in place for that in Brazil for more than a decade:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Brazil#Drug_patents](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Brazil#Drug_patents)

~~~
HillRat
This has come up on HN before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7531858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7531858)

Brazil's Article 71 eventually led to TRIPS Article 27 § 2 and § 3(a), which
affirm the rights of WTO member nations to exclude medical patents from
protection; and Article 31, which allows for what has become known as
"compulsory licensing" \-- use of a patent without the consent of the patent
holder.

It's been a pretty effective club for developing nations to wield against
pharmas, as drug companies know that if they don't provide or license their
meds at favorable terms the states can just start manufacturing them without
consent.

The flip side, of course, is that the pharmas end up wanting to increase the
pricing in developed nations, because the healthcare markets (especially in
the US) can bear much higher costs. That's why Gilead is charging $900 for an
HCV cure in Egypt (which has horrifically high rates of HCV infection), and
almost $90K for it in the US.

Now, there's a _lot_ of drug coming online for HCV over the next few years,
but right now Gilead has the market to itself and, at current pricing, it's
basically a _$1 trillion_ market in the US, EU and Japan. Gilead paid about
$11b for Pharmasset (the drug developers) and needs to recoup its investment,
so aggressive pricing in the developed world is unsurprising, if distressing.

------
DiabloD3
I don't get why people are turning to a drug, when a Paleo-esque high fat diet
may do more than any drug ever would.

Theres a rather popular blog about one dude's struggles with Hep C, and hes
been through a Sofosbuvir+GS-5816 trial, but otherwise has been fighting Hep-C
with a high fat no grain diet:
[http://hopefulgeranium.blogspot.com/](http://hopefulgeranium.blogspot.com/)

Edit: Don't know why people are downvoting me. I'm not even going to hazard a
guess on this one. Its a rather scientific blog that frequently links to
studies being done on Hep-C, ran by a guy that has Hep-C, and I've been
following it for over a year.

~~~
tbarbugli
you mean a diet can get rid of it for good? because thats what this drug does
(well for most of the people at least)

