The type of predatory pricing we see with drugs like Sovaldi and Harvoni is a major factor in ‘Obama Care’ (our US quasi public health insurance system) coming apart at the seams.

US Insurers are taking in more money than ever before, and US citizens are now forced to purchase insurance or face steep fines. Big Insurers were drooling all over themselves at the prospect of creating and benefiting from a completely captive market – until reality set in.

Now the Big Insurers themselves are ‘opting out’, leaving the Obama Care exchanges in droves and running over one another to get to the exits

Realistically, some of the decline in Gileads sales is likely due to the loss of Insurers which have already left the Obama Care exchanges. However, with insurance rates now skyrocketing between 20% and 30% per year, the number of Americans who can afford the non-subsidized rates is relatively small compared to the vast majority of Americans who are now trapped within the taxpayer subsidized Obama Care scheme.

Market forces will most likely eventually bring the entire system crashing down (wheels falling off, crashing an burning, completely derailed). The endgame for the current administration is to create the circumstances for the collapse of private healthcare so that the entire system can be scrapped, and replaced with a European style ‘single payer’ government run system.

So RHF, eventually the US Goverment will “come to the rescue” – to solve a problem they custom engineered to begin with. In the meantime there will be a great deal of unnecessary pain and suffering, and a lot of Americans caught up in this political quicksand will die.

None of this is anything we the ‘little people’ have any control over at the macro level right now. The best we can do for ourselves and our fellow citizens is to look out for our own well being, and spread the word about generic DAAs as quickly and effectively as possible.

My experience has always been that it doesn’t matter how good a product is if no one can afford to buy it. That 20% drop in sales tells me that fewer people are being treated, and probably the net death toll from HCV will rise by a similar percentage as a result.

You could almost infer the direct cost of greed in human lives lost with that number.

Have a nice break, Ariel! You’ve earned it. See you when you get back