Posted on 07/21/2014 3:27:15 PM PDT by artichokegrower
Gilead Sciences’ new hepatitis C drug receives as much praise for its healing powers as it receives criticism of its price, $84,000 for 12 weeks. Those parallel storylines played out even further in a prominent scientific journal’s latest edition, published online over the weekend.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.sfgate.com ...
Sovaldi saved my friends life. The previous regimine wasn’t successful and with out Sovaldi, she was looking at bleak prospects.
She also had less complications.
Not mine.
Even without the Obamacare mandates we will be forced to pay for Hepatitis C treatments for prisoners. The courts will decree that not treating them with this drug would be cruel and unusual punishment, as bad as not giving prisoners sex change operations on demand.
Was this drug developed with research paid for in whole or in part by government research grants?
More gifts of sodomy.....
I've been waiting for this to be available.... but my insurance doesn't cover it.
Apparently, Hep C got noted sodomites Gomer Pyle and Jack Kevorkian.
Or dirty needles.
I’m glad to hear that. The other treatments available are toxic, work only about 40% of the time and you have to be on them for 6 months to a year. I could go on a long discussion of just how much it takes to actually bring a new medicine to market...much of the 17 year patent life chewed up in exhaustive clinical trials and a capricious FDA but I won’t. If they look to the total cost to treat, including the additional meds for Sovaldi alternatives, I’d bet the costs are about the same or less over a patients lifetime. I wouldn’t expect my insurance will cover it either. But I don’t need pregnancy coverage and a whole host of other things that I am required to have. While they are bashing Gilead, will they ever ask who paid for the traitorous Brad Manning’s sex change operation?
Bingo. And the number of folks estimated to be running around with undetected HepC is impressive. The drug benefit justifies the expense. There should be enthusiasm for this drug - CURES do not come often. Yes the price is steep but not when compared to the costs of the eventual liver transplant.
Anyway... since I buy my own health insurance (and have done so ever since I left the corporate world 9 years ago) I can't have access to this cure... which really sucks.
So far the only people who are getting this wonder drug are people on welfare. Go figure.
On the bright side, this may just be the Medicare/Medicaid killer we’ve been waiting for. That’s going to be the biggest market for this drug, and they’re forbidden by law from negotiating the price.
Must have very active lobbyists. I hear them pushing the idea that boomers mysteriously have a high incidence of Hep and that all were to be tested. Sounds fishy to me.
I hear you. I recall a large number of Philadelphia firefighters acting as first responders also becoming infected. More sterile handling of wounded people has improved that but so many were infected many years ago, when there wasn’t even a test for it.
Everyone. There is a very low probability of having it but worth the test. Early detection is good.
“The estimated cost of a liver transplant is $577,100.”
I was going to say, it is cheaper than a new liver. But then that’s not the issue here now is it?
The issue is that the government has absolutely no right, and absolutely no business, telling me that I MUST pay in order to subsidize other people’s treatment (or their bad choices).
My insurance policy terms should be a private contractual agreement between me and my insurance provider, based on my individual health needs on the one hand and the actuarial risk of insuring me on the other. The government should NOT be attempting to destroy private insurance by turning it into a form of socialized medicine.
As an individual I should NOT be forced to foot part of the bill for someone’s abortions, births, contraceptives, HIV drugs, or HepC drugs. My insurance premiums should address MY F***ING HEALTH COSTS! NOT EVERYONE ELSE’S!
My insurance premiums should address MY F***ING HEALTH COSTS! NOT EVERYONE ELSE’S!
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You appear to misunderstand the nature of insurance, which is all about the many (with low usage) paying for the few (with high usage). Like your car insurance.
Your insurance premiums have always paid for others, since the day you started paying the premiums.
The estimated cost of a liver transplant is $577,100.
Then insurance premiums should go down. But that would probably be in the long run.
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