Healthcare for who? How our current system is putting profits over people.

It has become very clear that our for-profit healthcare system is biased to only providing cures for the rich. Sovalti is a lifesaving drug used to treat hepatitis C (HCV) with great success and minimal side effects in comparison to the previous drug it replaced. This groundbreaking drug was developed by a small biotech company called Pharmasset which was partially funded by the federal government before it was bought by the pharmaceutical company Gilead for a massive $11 billion (Henry, 2018).

Where the story starts getting messy is how Gilead decided how much to charge for the drug as well as why. Gilead priced Sovalti at a massive $84,000 or about $1000 per pill, making Sovalti inaccessible to the majority of the population who need it the most (Henry, 2018). This sounds ridiculous, but unless you can afford to buy the drug directly from the company, you have to wait until you are at the end stages of liver disease in order to qualify for the treatment through Medicaid (Khazan, 2015). This isn’t Medicaid’s fault, public health agencies like Medicaid cannot afford the $3.2 billion it would take to treat all of those suffering from HCV (“Column,” 2017). We have to ask ourselves, why are these drug prices so high?  

The high cost for research and development that goes into producing a drug like Sovalti is usually the excuse used for why companies like Gilead price their treatment so high, but let’s not forget who paid for that initial cost. Sovalti was partially funded using tax payer money, yet Gilead is trying to sell it back to you at an exorbitant amount (Americans for Tax Fairness, 2016). The treatment Sovalti replaced was priced at around $70,000 and Gilead used that price as a reference for pricing their new and improved drug, regardless of how much it is actually worth. The manufacturing price for Sovalti is estimated at about $134 per pill, yet is being sold at $1000 per pill (“This Is Why Hepatitis C Drugs Are So Expensive,” 2015). Pharmaceutical companies like Gilead are not in the business of helping people, they solely care about the bottom line, even if that means withholding treatment for those less fortunate.

The federal government is legally not allowed to negotiate drug prices due to massive lobbying by drug companies (Henry, 2018). Sovalti was partially funded using tax payer money, yet is bankrupting those who paid for that drugs development in the first place. This is indicative of a much bigger problem, one that that all of us as a society are facing. The healthcare system and primarily pharmaceutical companies are unethical and unjust by putting profits over people. Unraveling the health care system is too ambitious for a blog post but with the 2020 elections right around the corner we have a responsibility to educate ourselves as well as exercise our civic duty by voting. The constant debate is overwhelming but fixing our healthcare system is worth the growing pain of overhauling our current one.

References:

Column: Gilead says drug profits must stay high to pay for “innovation,” but 100% of its profits went to shareholders. (2017, October 23). Retrieved November 18, 2019, from Los Angeles Times website: https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-gilead-profits-20171023-story.html

Henry, B. (2018). DRUG PRICING & CHALLENGES TO HEPATITIS C TREATMENT ACCESS. Journal of Health & Biomedical Law, 14, 265–283.

Khazan, O. (2015, September 25). Prescription Drugs Are So Expensive That People Die Waiting to Get Them. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from The Atlantic website: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/an-expensive-medications-human-cost/407299/

This Is Why Hepatitis C Drugs Are So Expensive. (2015, November 12). Retrieved November 18, 2019, from HuffPost website: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-hepatitis-c-drugs-are-expensive_n_5642840be4b08cda34868c8a

GILEAD SCIENCES - Americans For Tax Fairness. (2016). Retrieved from https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/ATF-Gilead-Report-Finalv3-for-Web.pdf.