[bogomipz]

That's a strawman argument and you know it. A car is financed over 5 years. You can't get financing on pharmaceuticals. The "average" wedding is an equally bad comparison and your figure is wrong - average is actully 26K with majority of weddings under $10k:

http://www.costofwedding.com/

It is absolutely reprehensible behavior. If $1,500 is a reasonable price point and profit margin for a company elsewhere in the world then $84K in another part is simply outrageous.

[rayiner]

> A car is financed over 5 years. You can't get financing on pharmaceuticals.

As a matter of economics, the value of something doesn't (or shouldn't) depend on how easy it is to get financing for that thing. In fact, your financing example cuts the other way. That $33k new car is actually worth more like $40k to the buyer, because that's how much they pay after financing it. The market shows that people value an average new car at > $40k. So how is it unreasonable to say that the value of a Hep-C cure is at least $84k?

> It is absolutely reprehensible behavior.

Gilead is saving lives. Apple is making money hand over first selling shiny trinkets that nobody really needs. Which is the reprehensible one? What you're basically saying is that a company should make less money for creating products that fundamentally help humanity. That's crazy!

People should be able to get these drugs, even if they can't afford it. That's the difference between iPhones and Sovaldi. But it's the government's job to make that happen--the companies shouldn't be forced to basically be private charities.

[pgodzin]

Or Gilead is exploiting dying people desperate to save their lives and have enough money to do so, while letting the rest die. And then I'm sure they are lobbying the government to make sure it won't do anything about it.

Meanwhile, Apple is selling luxury products that people can buy if they would like to. And those that can't, survive just fine without one.

[rayiner]

So the company that is saving some lives is more reprehensible than the one that is saving no lives? Companies that create life-saving things should be charities, while companies that create things everyone can "survive just fine without" should be richly rewarded. Right? That doesn't seem backwards to you?

It's not like Sovaldi grows on trees, free for the picking, and Gilead came along and fenced-in the trees and now is charging $84,000 for access. It created a cure to what used to be a terminal disease. It should be rewarded in proportion to the value of curing the disease.

[pgodzin]

Yes, the company that actively prevents people from obtaining life-saving medicine for billions extra in profit is more reprehensible than the company that makes no pretenses about having anything to do with life and death.

Creating the cure was admirable, what it has done with it is reprehensible. It certainly has the right to make a significant profit. But a monopoly on medicine paid for by dying people with no other options does not accurately establish the value of curing the disease.

[rayiner]

> Yes, the company that actively prevents people from obtaining life-saving medicine for billions extra in profit is more reprehensible than the company that makes no pretenses about having anything to do with life and death.

So the moral impact of a company's actions depends not on the net good done by that company, but on the "pretenses" it does or does not put on? It's morally better to waste natural resources on frivolities like new iPhones every year, instead of saving some lives (but not all)?

And if it's morally reprehensible to not save a life when you have the power to do so, aren't all of Apple's customers morally reprehensible for buying iPhones? That money could literally save the life of someone in the world that lacks basic necessities.

[pgodzin]

> And if it's morally reprehensible to not save a life when you have the power to do so, aren't all of Apple's customers morally reprehensible for buying iPhones? That money could literally save the life of someone in the world that lacks basic necessities.

No, the decision to make billions extra in profits on top of the billions they would already be making at the cost of millions of lives is still definitely more reprehensible than someone spending a few hundred dollars more than they otherwise would on an essential device that provides information, communication and entertainment instead of giving it to someone less fortunate.

[1856294]

Why does everyone pretend that iPhones are a luxury? They are not. It's merely 800€. Even the drug in india still costs twice as much.

[verroq]

If all the poor people got naturally selected out then there won't be poor people anymore.

[lostlogin]

You may or may not have noticed that extreme poverty and hardship doesn't lead to less offspring, in fact the opposite occurs. Look at birth rates between wealthy and poor countries or groups.

[pgodzin]

Hope you're trolling, but speeding up the process for the most vulnerable in our society is extremely inhumane

[bogomipz]

Huh? Who said anything about "value"? You are the one who mentioned car pricing not me. My point is that cars are peoples single largest purchases outside of home ownership and for most people the only reason that is even viable is because a source of financing exists.

Why are you dragging iphones and Apple into this? You are way off point.

"the companies shouldn't be forced to basically be private charities." Wow, I don't anybody has ever compared a big pharma company to a private charity before. I had to reread that sentence twice.

How about Martin Shkreli the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who overnight raised the price of an AIDS drug from $13.50 to $750.00 a pill overnight? Is that OK? He shouldn't in your words "be forced to basically be private charity" right?

[1856294]

>As a matter of economics, the value of something doesn't (or shouldn't) depend on how easy it is to get financing for that thing.

When interest on mortgages shrinks the house prices will become inflated. In fact it's smarter to buy a house durng a time of high interest at 400k and later refinance with a lower interest rate than to buy the same house for 800k at a low interest rate without posibility of even cheaper refinancing.

[refurb]

If Gilead charged $1500 in every country it wouldn't have been worth to invest in the first place.

Remember they paid $11B for the right to the drug and they still had to bring it through development.

[mattdw]

Surely the right to the drug was only worth $11B in the first place because of $84k possibilities at the other end? If it was only ever going to be $1500, that $11B would have been adjusted accordingly.