Congratulations on EOT Coral. You’re quite awesome, and it’s a privilege to share this triumph with you!

Interesting premise, but I think its a bit premature to read the tea leaves that way yet.

Thanks for your gracious and kind invitations Beaches and Ariel. I would love to visit OZ and hope to see you both there someday. Was definitely kidding about sofa surfing though I did more than a fair amount of that while traveling in my 20’s, and these days I stay in hotels.

The offer to cook breakfast stands. I do make a hell of an omelette!

I hope both of you will come visit us in the states as well. Our corner of the US is great place to hang out, lots of culture, wild west and otherwise. We love company, and we’ll feed you and show you around!

Edited.

We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. As an artist, Intellectual property has kept food on the family the table. No question.

Generally speaking, and I have a great deal of experience in this area, any original idea or expression which has a commercial value or application will be copied.

Intellectual property laws exist to protect originators from those who would profit from the fruits of honest and arduous or inspired labor without paying a fair amount to the originators for their contribution.

Also generally speaking, the royalties to the creator of an intellectual property are typically a fraction of a percent to 5% to 10% of sales for mass distribution of the intellectual property.

Typically IP royalties are negotiated between IP owners and the IP distributors through their attorneys.

So, taking $11 Billion patent cost as a starting point, theoretically 12.1 billion plus 10% ongoing royalties on bulk sales to the patent owner would be a fair amount based on precedent.

One could reasonably negotiate and add in promotional, insurance, and other expenses to the equation, but the formula generally remains the same.

Presumably (allegedly), when Indian manufacturers negotiate with Gilead, pricing for domestic Indian markets are predicated on some version of this formula.

I have to think if Gilead can make a reasonable profit in India at $850, an unrestricted, unregulated, and unquestioned price of US$ 84,000 in the US, and in other ‘first world” countries is not only criminal, but deliberately genocidal.

We not only need to look at how we in the US treat and regulate pharmaceutical patents, but also how we define fiduciary duty for a publicly (or even privately held) corporation which actions and policies, and intellectual property holdings have such a grave bearing on public health and well being.

The concept of fiduciary duty for a company that makes cogs and sprockets, and for a company that trades in lifesaving cures which may directly affect the survival of hundreds of millions of people should be very different.

The sprocket and cog company should be free to charge whatever the market will bear to maximize profits for shareholders. Free enterprise! I’m all for it.

However, a company which trades in building and maintaining the very foundations public health has (or should have) a very different duty, and that is to deliver a product which provides maximum benefit to the greatest number of health care consumers possible in exchange for a healthy margin proportionate to larger the market it serves.

What is missing in the current predatory Big Pharma pricing strategy is any sense of stewardship or public responsibility.

No one has ever published the numbers – but if one has half a brain, the Big Pharma formula for creating and maintaining absolute maximum profits is simple. “Keep the price of the product as high as possible, and the profits (they call them ‘pipelines’ flowing at full capacity by ensuring through prohibitive pricing that the rate of infection outstrips the rate of cure – ad infinitum.

If I were a betting man, I’d be shorting Big Pharma about now, and Gilead would be first on the list.

Realistically, prices will not change from Gileads side unless the intellectual property is literally taken from them, either by changing pharmaceutical patent laws to a much shorter expiration (this will also force innovation), or simply ‘commandeering the patents in the public interest through Eminent Domain.

What has happened in the US, and throughout the world is that taxpayer, and citizen bank accounts have been hijacked by Big Pharma via the public health mandate. The fundamental problem is not the insurance companies, or exchanges, or what ever you call it where you live. It is what the insurance company and ultimately the consumer is forced to pay for.

Any answer to more affordable public/private health insurance must come fundamentally from pharmaceutical price reform, or more to the point – by bringing Big Pharma patent and price abuse to a drop dead halt.

Gaj wrote:

“Thanks Fitz,

Wouldn’t this “raise prices, not lower them”?

For the high end patented medications for which Big Pharma is currently getting extortionate prices, and even for the off patent ‘generic’ drugs currently available in the US domestic market — provided the US market were deregulated, and pharmaceutical manufacturers worldwide are allowed to compete – not on the ‘grey market’, but head to head in the US market – the answer is a resounding NO!!! Prices overall will drop very, very quickly.

Every manufacturer in the world wants a piece of the US market, tariff or no tariff.

Let US insurance companies and US health care providers buy quality pharmaceuticals in bulk from the lowest bidder, and you’ll see pharmaceutical prices everywhere drop like a rock.

If a 20% to 35% advantage isn’t enough to keep US pharma companies competitive (and it likely is) – Sayonara boys, don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out!

Also, a US tariff would affect only pharmaceuticals imported to the US, and worldwide price competition would apply downward pressure on pricing worldwide – so I think that would be a ‘win’ for everyone.