[ghufran_syed]

The company has only 4 more years of patent exclusivity in the US, and 3 more years in Europe. If there is really SO MUCH MONEY to be made by selling it, wouldn't we expect other companies to be developing their own version right now, so they can sell it in 2021. And wouldn't the presence of many different sellers reduce the price? [1] End result, new drug that benefits patients, at steadily lower prices... isn't that what we want? Is there some reason to think that other companies will NOT want a piece of that large pile of money?

I intensely dislike the way pharma companies "buy" the opinions of prominent doctors and get them to sell their drugs for them. There are many similarly unethical things that the pharma companies do, but having made a drug that seems to help patients, and then charging as much as they can for the limited time that they can does not seem unreasonable.

This econtalk episode [2] on "price gouging" seems particularly relevant, it's really very entertaining (and educational)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_pharmaceutical_price_d...

[2] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/01/munger_on_price_1.h...

[makomk]

It's a biologic. There are huge obstacles to licensing generic versions of those in the US, they're quite expensive to produce, and there's a substantial risk that the original manufacturer will drop the price to the point that the generic manufacturer can't make their money back or even incentivise customers not to buy generics: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-co-britain-remicade... In the UK, which is the country that Wikipedia article is about, generics do somewhat work to drive prices down.