But it’s dated May 2015?

Hmmm… don’t think so, the comments stretch from May to December last year. And there are some beauties. Full of ignorance. I guess breaking the patents hasn’t worked…yet.

It won’t happen.
The only time the NIH has “March in” rights to break the patent or grant other companies a license to produce generics, is if the company that holds the patent has not made efforts to commercialize it within an agreed upon time frame or if the “action is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs that are not being met by the company holding the patent.

So they have no grounds for using Bayh-Dole….and why would you want to anyway. If the patent is broken and other companies are given permission to develop generics, it would take years to get approval from the FDA. We can’t wait years.

Let me put it this way, the NIH has always refused to get involved when requests were made for them to interfere because of pricing issues. For example, in 2004, the HIV group complained to them and asked them to interfere when the drug company increased the price of a med 400%.

“The NIH denied the petition finding no grounds to exercise its march-in rights. The NIH cited:
The availability of Norvir to patients with AIDS.
That there was no evidence that health and safety needs were not adequately met by Abbott, and
That the NIH should not address the issue of drug pricing, only Congress.”

So If you want to break patent Congress would have to do it.

PP

Hmm. Not sure that there have been any licensing deals with generics manufacturers that U.S. Vets admin can take advantage of? And responsive wouldn’t be the word I would apply to Gilead licensing deals in countries that did not recognise the patent. Perhaps reactive is a more appropriate description?

While not sure what the PBS agreement has to do with the above discussion, we can go there if you like. I’m not privy to what the correct costs are so will accepts yours for now but as you more correctly point out further down your post the Australian government isn’t “footing the bill”. The Australian taxpayer is though, and as one I’m not sure I understand why we have to pay the price of $30k per Tx for something that the manufacturer can make for several hundred bucks (probably less) and generics manufacturers could supply for around 5-7% of Gilead’s price even after paying a 7% licensing fee?

And I don’t see anything extraordinary in a publicly funded universal health care system such as Medicare paying for healthcare for all Australians, although I guess the profits that Gilead is still making on the deal would qualify for that word!

The VA pays Gilead $50,000 per treatment (even though Dr Schinazi, who invented Sof, did it while working for the VA and the VA and NIH funded him). But even with the discount they’re saying they can’t afford to treat all veterans and there are still thousands of undiagnosed Veterans under their care.

In June 2015, the VA said they had a total of 233,000 Veterans under their care but only 180,000 were eligible for treatment (and that meant that they’ve had a viral load and genotype done. Can you imagine that? The assholes can deny treatment by not doing the tests they’re supposed to do. So they have treated a total of only 39,000 Veterans (that includes treatment with interferon). Since interferon came out on the market in 1991, that means that in 24 years the VA has only treated 39,000 (8,000 with the new treatments). At that pace, most of them will die.

The VA is so corrupt we are actually attempting the impossible but we keep trying. I visit this forum because when I see what Australians have done and how supportive they are of one another, it renews my faith in mankind.

PP

PP

Dear A.L.,

If you bought a new top of the range car with all the latest gadgets (speed control, air conditioning, parking assist, econo-boost engine, interior LEDs, the lot) for $50 000, you’d probably be pretty happy with the deal, right?

Suppose you then learn that the true cost of manufacturing that car (including all R&D and a fair profit margin) was only $1 000?

How would you feel about that?

This is how it is today with Gilead’s prices …

http://fixhepc.com/blog/item/25-the-real-development-cost-of-sofosbuvir.html

While I completely agree with the post above, let us not forget that capitalism is the only reason these meds exist at all. Capitalism in all it’s ugliness, is what has helped the world’s poor the most. Generics is actually the free-market system at it’s best.