Gilead's $2,340 price for coronavirus drug (Remdesivir) draws criticism

[Mike 03]

Associated Press via SF Gate
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Chief Medical Writer | on June 29, 2020

The maker of a drug shown to shorten recovery time for severely ill COVID-19 patients says it will charge $2,340 for a typical treatment course for people covered by government health programs in the United States and other developed countries.

Gilead Sciences announced the price Monday for remdesivir, and said the price would be $3,120 for patients with private insurance. The amount that patients pay out of pocket depends on insurance, income and other factors.

“We’re in uncharted territory with pricing a new medicine, a novel medicine, in a pandemic,” Gilead’s chief executive, Dan O’Day, told The Associated Press.

“We believe that we had to really deviate from the normal circumstances” and price the drug to ensure wide access rather than based solely on value to patients, he said.

However, the price was swiftly criticized; a consumer group called it “an outrage” because of the amount taxpayers invested toward the drug's development.

Read more: https://www.sfgate.com/news/amp/Gilead-prices-coronavirus-drug-at-2-340-for-rich-15373236.php

[Mike 03]

1. This sentence seems important too:

In 127 poor or middle-income countries, Gilead is allowing generic makers to supply the drug; two countries are doing that for around $600 per treatment course.

[soothsayer]

2. Is there -- is there -- balm in Gilead?

Greed, maybe.

[still_one]

3. Really a stupid move. Besides the obvious ethical implications, if they would charge cost or no

cost for this application, it would provide valuable PR for a company that has been heavily critisized for the price gouging, especially regarding their Hepatitis C treatment

remdesivir is not going to be a huge money maker for this application, especially since there appears that other cheaper options may actually be more effective, (dexamethasone)

[customerserviceguy]

4. You're asking a leopard to change its spots

as the old saying went. Big Pharma gouges the hell out of US consumers. I get some of my meds from Canadian pharmacies where they're made by these generic producers.

[cbdo2007]

5. Trump has already ordered 500,000 treatments at $2,340 each for $1.1 Billion

So who all owns Gilead Science stock again? Isn't this the company that used to be run by Don Rumsfeld?

[Midnightwalk]

6. We need to fix the patent system for US funded research

Sounds like Gilead kept federal researches and university researches off of the patent. Wonder if Barr will go after them.

The first document was an application filed in September 2015 in which Gilead sought a U.S. patent for a using the compound for any number of coronavirus infections. Although the code Gilead assigned to the compound – GS-5734 – does not appear in the body of the application, experts who have reviewed the chemical structure say the compound is remdesivir. And Gilead could take that patent, which was issued last year, to the bank if its medicine ever becomes a viable business proposition for treating Covid-19 or any other illness.

One month later, some of the same Gilead employees whose names appeared on the patent application were listed as co-authors on a Nature research paper – along with numerous government scientists – showing remdesivir, specifically, held promise in fighting Ebola and other coronaviruses. The paper also noted testing was conducted at high-risk security labs run by the federal government.

....

Gilead actually had a huge number of patents on the molecules, but had to do a tremendous amount of work to figure out which variations of the various molecules would work against the biological models the government had. This patent illustrates the essence of why collaboration between the public and private sectors is important, not just in terms of money, such as grants, but resources.”

“What really matters is how much money the government has put into research, but if their names were on there, it would help to make the case there was a lot of in-kind contribution from the government,” she explained. “Right now, if Gilead tried to assert rights (in response to a patent challenge), there would be no way to know there was some government right to a license to the patent.”

Generally, one must play connect the dots to find government assistance. For instance, the National Institutes of Health gave grants to several universities whose researchers worked with Gilead scientists. Their efforts appeared in a 2018 paper in the American Society for Microbiology, which found remdesivir can combat coronaviruses, noted Tahir Amin, who heads the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge, an advocacy group that challenged various Gilead patents on hepatitis C medicines.

[link:https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/05/08/gilead-remdesivir-covid19-coronavirus-patents/|]

Sounds like it is almost standard for companies to leave government funded investigators (employees and grantees) off of patents. I haven't read enough on Bayh-Dole, which allowed companies to get patent rights on US funded research, but it does give rights to the us government. The idea was to make it easier to commercialize patents from government research for the economic benefit while retaining paten rights for the government.

It's complex and I'm not sure if it goes far enough, but if none of the government funded researchers are on the patent(s), that's a more basic problem. I'm sure the pharmaceutical companies fund candidates who don't support going after patent fraud (don't know the right word for deliberately leaving inventors off a disclosure) or tightening the rules so US citizens aren't gouged.

[genxlib]

7. I am surely in the minority here

But that number does not hit my outrage button.

To have a real opinion I would need to have a much better idea of the development costs and the share covered by the government.

I would prefer it to be less but realistically, I didn't hate this number. If it is truly life saving, it is hard to put a value on that. But even on an economic scale, the early studies showed an average of leaving the hospital four days earlier. That has an actual value that is far beyond the cost of the medicine itself. Based on what it cost to be in a hospital ICU, it is likely a substantial cost savings on average.

Our system is totally out of whack and we desperately need something better. But I don't think this is the worst case I have seen.

Go ahead. Flame me.

[GeorgeGist]

8. Do tell us ...

what is the worst case you have seen?

[genxlib]

9. We hear about this BS all the time

A simple Google search gave me this. https://www.goodrx.com/blog/20-most-expensive-drugs-in-the-usa/

20 drugs that are more than 25k per month.

And many of those are perpetual costs that people have to endure month after month. This Covid drug is presumably for a one time treatment course.

Like I said. Not the worst I have seen.

And I will say again, it should be less. But considering how the market has priced these things before, it would not have surprised me to see higher. Doesn't make it right. Just relatively less wrong.