[ineedasername]

according to the article, and a few google searches outside of it, the drug was that good. The article's implicit conclusion was that the drug was priced too high, and offers evidence to back that claim. You seem to be assuming a perfect rational market here that has a rational justification, but real markets don't always work that way.

[refurb]

As someone who works in the industry, the article was a 30,000 ft view and didn’t do a good job of digging into the issue.

Regardless, it looks like the drug does reduce pancreatitis attacks, but only by 50%. So it certainly doesn’t “cure” the patient.

The clinical trials were also quite small, so possibly the national payers said “$1M is reasonable if you do X, but you don’t have the data to convince me you can do X.”