TOPIC: Gilead Share Price Clobbered

www.investors.com/news/technology/gilead...late-nash-hiv-units/

My opinion - this is what happens when a lifesaving drug is priced out of reach for the majority of patients who could benefit from it.

I wish it was true!

To my thinking the heart of the matter is that Big Pharma has been strangling the geese that lay the golden eggs for years, rather than carefully nurturing them.

Actually a better analogy is "over grazing" or "over fishing" - as a profit strategy it works for a while but the incessant price hikes of both new and old medications have effectively tapped out the available pool of insurance and government dollars. This has almost certainly been going on forever but the pace has recently ramped up rapidly, so rapidly that we (as in patients and legislators) have noticed.

It's a bit like boiling a frog - if you put it in cold water and steadily increase the heat it won't jump out and will eventually get cooked, but if you try to drop it into boiling water it will jump straight out. The slow and steady price hikes of years gone by went by the wayside, but recent events have been so egregious that people are starting to notice. Patients are wanting drugs that legislators don't have the cash to fund.

IMO, Gilead and others will keep their drugs priced high in order to keep earnings projections high. Once their stock finally collapses in price, they will cut the price substantially, and insurance companies will start to treat more patients, which will cause the stock to rally and the executives can sell their stock and make millions again. For Gilead executives it's all about cashing out their stock and options. They can only sell so many shares in a given time period. They simply have no concern for patients. Neither do the other drug companies.