Two newborn twins need a one-dose treatment that would save their lives: Zolgensma, a $2.1M drug. Insurance (also the mother's employer) cut coverage of the drug the day after they were born.
wbtv.com
america is so fucking based man
in any proper country that company at least gets forced to pay by the government then ordered to shut down forever due to wanton cruelty. all the employees get generous severance except whoever made that call. depending upon your view of carceral punishment there are a few ways to go with that guy.
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What legitimate reason would there be to price drug like that? Is that what the r&d cost to create it? Greed. Thats where 99.9% of cost issues end up for
Zolgemsma is a modified version of adeno associated virus and has to be grown under specific conditions. It costs $500k-$1m per production.. It's also a one time injection that functionally cures the person of the disease. There are a couple other options but for comparison, the other therapeutic is Spinraza which is an intermittent intrathecal infusion which is $805,000 for the first year of therapy and $380,000 per year thereafter for the rest of your life.
To be clear, I think we should bear the actual costs of research, development, and manufacture as a society and not profiteer off the sick, but there are some contributory reasons for the price.
If it costs 1 million to produce then anything above a 1.1 million cost is still pure greed.
yeah this video was helpful to understand the complexity in manufacturing AAVs, namely the raw size of the proteins manufacturers need to create & interweave.
👆 that little dot in the lower left corner is Aspirin (timestamp 12:00)
Wait if that's Aspirin then how do they get the big one inside of you? 😱
Those are molecule sizes, all these molecules are still very small
Oh good. I was getting worried there...
There's always more to the story isn't there? Else it wouldn't be called clickbait
Modern medical research targeting worldwide drug distribution is ridiculously expensive due to legislation in different countries. Gone are the days when a pharmacist could give random shit to the unsuspecting clients to see if they would survive their walk home. And I don't think you'd want these days to come back.
Modern drugs cost tens of millions of dollars to develop at a minimum, and can easily reach into the billions.
And usually subsidized with public money.
If only there was a class of people with so much money we could tax the whole amount from them and they wouldn't even notice.