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Open thread May 23, 2017

Dan Crawford | May 23, 2017 5:32 am

Tags: open thread Comments (3) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
3 Comments
  • Denis Drew says:
    May 23, 2017 at 11:06 am

    Gilead’s geese-that-never-stop-laying-golden-eggs viruses

    GOTTACURE VIRUS

    Gilead has announced that a Hepatitis C virus has been introduced to the world and is now infecting 3 million Americans (and perhaps 125 million sufferers worldwide).

    Gilead wants $300 billion from the US for a (99%) cure (which costs them $200 a patient to manufacture, half a billion for the whole US — but, hey, vics will pay what it’s worth to them, right?

    Pay now and get cured — or stretch the payoff over Gilead’s 20 year patent and pay almost the same while the virus infects ever more victims. Gilead can extract $10 billion a year anyway — insurance will cover that much annually for sickest patients.

    “The number of new [US] infections nearly tripled in five years, to about 2,400 in 2015. The virus is spread by sharing needles to inject drugs, and the increase coincided with a surge in heroin use.”
    http://abc7chicago.com/health/hepatitis-c-infections-nearly-triple-in-5-years-from-heroin-epidemic/1981856/

    Pay up instead of dragging it out and save 400,000 US lives before the patent dies.

    “Data from death certificates shows a total of 19,659 deaths in 2014, up from 11,051 in 2003. Because death certificates often under report hepatitis C, Ward said, that number could also be much higher.”
    http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/04/health/hepatitis-c-deaths-all-time-high/

    And who can guess how many hundreds of billions will go down the drain stateside dealing with the ravages of the virus: liver cirrhosis and cancer — not to mention lost work years?

    California’s 600,000 sufferers would need $60 billion to neutralize Gilead’s goose-that-never-stops-laying-golden-eggs Hep C virus. World-wide elimination of Hep C at US prices (Gilead only charges about $1,000 a cure in poor countries — all the traffic will bear I guess) would come to 12.5 trillion (with a “t”) dollars (if they could get away with it).

    Gilead: pay now and don’t die — or pay almost as much (maybe more) later while almost as many (maybe more) die anyway.

    CRYORCURE VIRUS

    Gilead has formulated a (95%) cure for all forms of Hepatitis, A, B, C, D, E — at $75,000 a treatment US. At US prices, 400 million worldwide sufferers would need to pony up $22.5 trillion (with a “t”) or whatever the market will bear …

    … fast or slow, high or low: the world will pay.

  • Denis Drew says:
    May 25, 2017 at 10:04 am

    ADDENDUM
    Single payer Medicare does nothing to prevent the medical extortion above. As long as there is no countervailing force, the proliferation of the financialization of medicine — and of every other American enterprise — will continue unabated. Countervailing force? High labor union density. 6% union density in the private economy equates to 20/10 blood pressure: it starves every other healthy process.

    • run75441 says:
      May 25, 2017 at 5:44 pm

      Dennis:

      Getting close to what I want to hear.

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