[rayiner]

In one study, 60% of the people who died of Hep-C were between 45 and 59: https://www.hepmag.com/article/death-risk-24659-138388084. More than half of cases aren't the result of intravenous drug use: https://aasldpubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/cl....

> In any case it's nearly irrelevant because this was completely post-hoc rationale for pricing this drug

Drug development, like tech startups, is high risk, but every now and then creates a lot of economic value. To make the system sustainable, there must be a way of capturing a significant chunk of that value from those "unicorns." So yes, it's post hoc in the sense that you don't know until after you roll the decide whether a particular drug is going to create a lot of value or not. That's the case with most high risk investments.

> Forgive me for thinking you are defending the wrong system.

Forgive me for thinking that people are completely nuts for thinking it's a good idea to lower the potential rewards to investment for industries that are "more important." It's completely ass-backward.

[fricat1ve]

Those studies don't say what you're claiming.

I meant the pricing was post-hoc in the sense that they came up with a story like yours for why it was worth $84,000 when they were bringing it to market. There was no precedent for a pill that costly when the research was undertaken. Even in the case of HCV--the best case to be discussing if you're an advocate of for-profit medicine--it's not a good example of an incentive structure.