| Economy
Gilead’s Remdesivir Could have Broken Even at $10 a vial. It was sold at $600.
The price for this potentially lifesaving medication reveals a string of other similar scandals that plague the rest of the American pharmaceutical industry.
By Hector Miranda Plaza, December 26, 2020
Title Image: Associated Press
It’s no secret to anyone that the American Healthcare System is broken, and that this has been the case for a long time. In the self-proclaimed “best and richest country in the world”, healthcare is separated from most of the world in three aspects: it is primarily supplied by the private sector, at a steeper cost than in any other comparable upper income countries - $10,224 per capita - and with lower quality and higher rates of accidents, mortality, rates of disease, and treatment outcomes.
Despite constant calls for change over many years, however, it was the only the coronavirus that laid bare its ugly underbelly for more to see than ever before. An especially egregious case of this is Gilead Sciences’ Remdesivir, which gained popularity during the beginning months of the pandemic.
When given to those infected with COVID it shortened recovery times by 33%, an unprecedented number for a medicine against a virus that had only just begun to be the subject of medical trials. Treatments like these, along with the pharmaceutical industry’s track record of price gouging and scandal, show the need for immediate and radical reform in our approach to healthcare.
How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries? Peterson-KFF
The cost for a full six day treatment of remdesivir is a whopping $3,120, or $520 a vial. To put how ludicrous this is into perspective, most Americans could not even afford incurring a surprise $400 expense, let alone upwards of thousands of dollars in medical treatments.
Those who seek to undermine the fight for affordable healthcare often retort in favor of such high prices by arguing that, without such high markups, funding for the development of such crucial medicines would not be available.
This is certifiably untrue, especially in the case of remdesivir as the game-changing drug could have broken even if priced at a meager $10 a treatment. Although this is one of the most recent examples of Gilead engaging in brutal price gouging, it is but one of many in a long history of pricing abuses and scandals.
In 2018, Gilead was sued for intentionally delaying the release of more effective HIV treatments based on a compound known as tenofovir alafenamide fumarate, or TAF. At the time, the corporation held a patent granting them exclusive production and distribution rights over HIV drugs based on the older and less effective compound tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, or TDF.
They delayed the release of the more effective drugs solely to profit from their exclusive rights to the older drug, which endangered uncountable numbers of people susceptible to HIV and other similar diseases. In addition to this, sofosbuvir, a drug patented by Gilead, is priced at a thousand dollars per pill of the treatment, or an unbelievable $84,000 for a whole treatment.
In comparison to this expensive cost, though, the break even point for the treatment was estimated to be a comparatively paltry $68-136. These, along with many other documented cases of borderline extortion, are not just limited to Gilead but to the pharmaceutical industry of the United States as a whole.
In the US, pharmaceutical companies have largely cemented their iron clasp over Congress, collectively spending on average more than $200 million a year through lobbying and more than $400 million on political campaign contributions. This has allowed them to loosen regulations and charge those in most dire need of medical treatment thousands under the false pretense of recouping cost; this is not even mentioning the fact that that would imply prioritizing cost over thousands of human lives if it was true.
The mot egregious part of this situation, however, is that many hundreds of drugs, including remdesivir, receive millions in government funding, and not a single penny made from the drug is enjoyed by the public in the form of lower prices.
Medical workers wearing personal protective equipment tend to a coronavirus patient in the intensive care unit of a private hospital in New Delhi, India. Reuters
The fundamental problem with our healthcare system is one that has been continually been ignored by American politicians: the monied interest. Arguments in favor of this interest often falsely state that only money can provide the impetus necessary for the creation of innovative drugs, and that the high prices are by consequence a necessary evil.
This has been proven to be demonstrably wrong, though, as even a brief delve into the history of modern medicine shows how many treatments such as the polio vaccine were created without a profit motive. How, then, can this be rectified?
In countries with better healthcare outcomes in both cost and quality, limiting the power of the private healthcare sector, or getting rid of it entirely, has been proven to be the most effective way to guarantee this essential service.
Cuba, for example, nationalized healthcare in its entirety to great success, with Cubans enjoying some of the highest quality healthcare in the Western Hemisphere at little to no cost. Even tame measures like Canada’s price and patent regulations on pharmaceutical companies have led to improvements.
Because of the systematic control of the industry in the United States, however, government action of the type proven to work is markedly harder to implement. There are ways around this, though. Things as simple as demonstrating, signing petitions, calling your representatives, and exercising your vote judiciously do make a difference when we all do them, even if it doesn’t feel like it. By making ourselves heard, we can begin to chew away at the power of pharmaceutical companies, and take back control of our health.