So you feel that given the 3 million people in the US that an $84,000 price tag to cure Hep C is reasonable? Congress has asked only that they justify the price tag given that people on medicare/medicaid will be paying the same, and how about people with lower income but not in those programs.
Also let's do the math. 3000000*84000= 252,000,000,000
252 billion it will cost if Gilead has its way. How much did the R&D cost if you happen to know? Consider that their annual R&D expenses from 2010 - 2013 below in millions of dollars -
R&D Expenses 1,072.9 1,229.2 1,651.9 2,119.8
Let's be generous and knock off all 2 billion from the cost. Still left with 250 billion. Maybe all the rest of their operating expenses over the same time frame -
Selling General & Admin Expenses, Total 1,044.4 1,213.5 1,349.4 1,699.4
(Source for numbers)So another 1.7 billion.
248 billion left. Maybe we should shift the perspective from worrying that actually curing diseases when you are a drug manufacturer will reduce the market to just realizing that you can still make a profit and still cure people with out asshattery levels of charging.
No one said $5 in any of the articles I read. But some company did say $84k and that company is Gilead Science.
Heck we could roll the entire four years of operating and R&D expenses together. 11.4 billion. Still a pretty chunk of change coming their way. But what do I know. I may be missing something in this.
But no I don't think companies are withholding cures. They just want to charge a good amount of money for it, and sometimes they want to charge a crapton amount of money for it.