TOPIC:

And not to forget who is on the side of monopolists... Bill Gates ( former CEO of Microsoft) just declared US drug pricing system is better than most and that Gilead's prices are justified: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-...tem-better-than-most

For sure when reading such "wisdom" one barely can handle the own anger, yet a clear mind and further news spreading about generics offers the better outcome, especially when this helps people get cured. I can choose for myself: being x hours angry on Bill (or others like him) or being x hours involved in how to spread the news about generics hcv drugs. I personally prefer the last one, although I have to admit that from time to time a certain dose of anger motivates me as it focuses me on what I should do, as a kind of substitute for coffee.

Regards
RHF

Gates is the father of "ransom-ware". It isn't that his software is so wonderful. It isn't. Gates' fortune was built on Microsoft's monolithic intellectual property prowess.

Holding gravely ill patient's hostage against a $94,000 ransom is quite different than requiring people to pay $300 for a word processing program, and then making them upgrade every two years.

No one ever died from not having MS Word. To apply Gates' machiavellian intellectual property schemes to life sustaining, life saving medications isn't just irresponsible and predatory - it is the very definition of Evil.

Big Pharma no doubt runs on Microsoft software. Gates' support for Big Pharma's predatory pricing schemes isn't philanthropy. For him it is just good business.


e·vil
ˈēvəl/

noun
noun: evil

1.
profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.
"the world is stalked by relentless evil"
synonyms: wickedness, bad, badness, wrongdoing, sin, ill, immorality, vice, iniquity, degeneracy, corruption, depravity, villainy, nefariousness, malevolence; More...

Ahh the sentence about the big pharmaceticals have been great partners to our foundation is why he would not say a bad word about them.

Also love how Bill talks about the compassionate tiered pricing.

Here in Thailand treatment runs about $14-15K USD. That prices about 95% of the Thai population out of the cure.

Earth to Bill come out of your bubble.

Horse $hit.

This does get me fired up though. Cant wait to get back to the US for some activism at the roots.

Thanks for booost

Ya cheese, sorry to go off topic but...

I was speaking with a doctor at Vejthani a short time ago. I explained my choice of sof/dac was as much political as medical and she said that yes they could get that there now. I said, yes but could she get it for $1000 or was it more like 6-7 thousand dollars? She kinda looked at me funny, and the conversation changed to a different subject. A few minutes later, as I was getting ready to leave, she walked off for a minute and returned with a piece of paper with a bunch of calculations on it. After running through those calculations and converting at 35 baht to the dollar it was a total of US$15,768 for 12 weeks of sof/dac.

Now I don't know how easily an average Thai can get a passport, but a flight on Malaysia Air through KL to Dhaka is currently running $243rt and a rt direct flight can be found in the $350 range. Add in the $700 price of 12wks Darvoni and it's ~$950-1050. I bet a bus ride to Myanmar could move the total price even lower.

And I bet very few people in Thailand have any idea they can do that.

You were looking for activist ideas, right?

The video with Bill Gates makes me want to puke. If he wasn't a billionaire and he or a family member of his had HCV he absolutely wouldn't be trotting out that line.

And the thing about the US pricing system being better than most is just pants. I think I'm right in saying that the US charge the highest price in the world for Harvoni. It's almost twice the price it is in the UK or Germany. Gilled might argue that the US is the richest country in the world but when one divides GDP by the population the US is only slightly richer (per person) than these countries.

"And not to forget who is on the side of monopolists... Bill Gates ( former CEO of Microsoft) just declared US drug pricing system is better than most and that Gilead's prices are justified: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-...tem-better-than-most

For sure when reading such "wisdom" one barely can handle the own anger,"

I started to go off that bloke after Windows 3.1. Eventually wised up in 2011 and went Apple all together. But of course stuck with Windows 7 and Word for work and Uni, and for my wife using Word at Uni too.

I found the whole experience with that corporation's products (with some relief via Win 98 and XP at home, and now 7 at work) more traumatising then the Hep C virus. Had bought a laptop with Vista and one for my wife with Windows 8 (Bill did not do that one?) which is considerably worse. What were they thinking???

I don't think Mr Gates is really qualified to talk about software least of all Gilead's pricing structure. I think the 'market' they manipulate eventually tricks them into believing their own bullshit.


Yours


Jeff

I have to agree with Bill Gates. The US pricing system is better than most of you hold a monopoly. In fact, I personally believe that the US pricing system is absolutely the best if you want to make seriously large amounts of money. With a net worth of some $86 billion, Bill Gates is very probably the richest person in the world:

www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebri...ill-gates-net-worth/

I also remember the days when Microsoft World was something like $300 or more per licence. That's not a bad price for someone who is sick and needs treatment. But that figure wasn't the price for a medical treatment. It was the price that just about every business user on the planet had to pay!

Thankfully, we now have almost comparable software like OpenOffice, which is free-to-use open source software.

Let's say OpenOffice is "generic" software. We now take it for granted that good generic software like OpenOffice is freely available, and that Microsoft has to find other ways to make money (The Cloud, etc.).

But how long did it take to get to that point? 15 years? More?

OK, Bill Gates has given a heck of a lot of money through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ($3.8 billion in 2014 and about $28 billion in total according to the above link) help tackle global health issues and third world diseases such as HIV, and Malaria:

www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resou...s/Annual-Report-2014

So you could say that Bill Gates is a classic case of "get rich, and then become a philanthropist". Even if we don't particularly like they way they that someone like Bill Gates has made his money, the world is never short of philanthropists.

But we are not talking about software here. People are dying or living in agonies from Hep-C while the price is high and fortunes are being made.

How long does the world have to wait until the big bosses at Gilead decide they have made enough money to become philanthropists? 15 years? More? Will they ever do what Bill Gates is doing? I doubt it.

When it comes to Gilead and Big Pharma, the world cannot wait for the next generation of potential philanthropists to make their fortunes first.

Christ almighty. Bill Gates dispenses the Kool-Aide, and without questioning the veracity or examining the intention of his statements, people just take the bait and run with it.

Sorry, Vororo - but he just got you too. There is no 'American' or 'US Pricing system'. There are only soulless global corporate hegemonosts like Microsoft and Gilead, and a thousand others who use the laws of virtually every country in the world to twist and subvert the intention of international patent, trademark and copyright laws to do what they were never intended to do. Namely to provide carte blanche to ravenous global corporate raiders, who treat the public trust and interest like a hostile takeover target as they gut, vivisect, and feast upon it until there is nothing left on the bones.

The principles which allow them to do this are global, and are encoded in the Berne Convention: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention They apply to your country no less than they do to mine.

There is a very dark side to Globalism, and corporate hegemonists like Gates, Soros and Zuckerberg are its poster boys. Jobs was as well, but he was always exactly who he was, and never pretended to be anything or anyone else.

Good points all on Open Office (love it), and the fake philanthropists, and fake philanthropy of world.

I said I wasn't going to post for a while, and now I've gone and done it anyway. I yield the floor.

Hi Fitz,

I am absolutely NOT a fan of Bill Gates or how he uses his money. He is rich and famous, and so he gets a lot of media attention. I detest the way he uses this access to media to promote is personal half-baked theories on how to make the world a better place. Here is my favourite example of this:

www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_teachers_ne...?language=en#t-64197

I totally agree there are many, many, many better ways that people like Gates and Soros and Buffet could use their vast wealth. But they are blinded by their own success and they will do nothing to question or change the system that created them.

Arghhh!!!

I'm gonna stop here, and think some more about how to get more doctors on board instead.

Cheers,