August 09, 2014
The Washington Post treated us to another hand wringing piece on Sovaldi. The deal is that we could virtually eliminate a major disease in 10-20 years if only we were prepared to bite the bullet and pay Gilead Sciences $84k a head for Sovaldi.
Those are not the only options. Gilead Sciences charges $84,000 for Sovaldi but it doesn’t actually cost $84,000 to produce the drug. Generic manufacturers make the drug available in Egypt for less than $1,000 per person and Indian generic manufacturers believe they could produce it for even less. If we allowed people in the United States to go these countries to get treatment, covering the cost of travel for themselves and immediate family, it would be possible to provide treatment for a small fraction of this cost.
If this were done on a large scale it would undermine the model of financing research through granting patent monopolies, however it is long past time that this 16th century mode of financing be re-examined. There is a vast literature in economics on the waste and corruption that results from policies like tariffs that raise the price of products above the cost of production.
In the case of Sovaldi, the patent monopoly has a distortionary effect that is similar to a 10,000 percent tariff. Predictably it leads to a huge amount of corruption, with companies routinely misrepresenting the safety and effectiveness of their drugs. The secrecy that companies rely upon to ensure themselves the ability to capitalize on the value of their research also slows the pace of drug development. Unfortunately the industry is so powerful (it is a major source of advertising revenue for the Post), that it can prevent alternatives to patents from even being raised in public debate.
Comments