Keep trivializing the achievements of pharmaceutical research scientists from the "big bad" pharma companies ... 

Downplaying when you yourself probably don't have any scientific skills to conduct the clinical trials is just a show of cowardice. The people who waste the vast majority of their lives trying to find drug candidates to give hope for the ill are the most virtuous and deserve to be compensated as much as possible yet are now classified as pariahs. Your social democrat hero, Bernie Sanders can't do shit to save lives compared to "big pharma" so #DealWithIt ... 

I already gave you a previous example with Gilead Sciences which is almost valued $100B in market cap and they brought a cure for Hepatitis C a little under 5 years ago which effects several dozen millions of people each year or is that somehow not "major" enough for you ? (if the drug hadn't been brought out into the market there would've been many more fatalities caused by chronic Hepatits C infections which would've developed into liver cancer and the patients at that point had to face the prospects of a compatible organ donor along with the possibility of a transplant rejection) 

We'll soon have gene therapies for Hemophilia which is a fairly notable disease no thanks to "big bad pharma" ... 

It’s sort of like how the Port and Starboard sides of a ship remain constant regardless where you stand on the deck.  No matter what country in the World you are in.  You should probably stay out of politics—and sailing—if you find this sort of thing challenging.

You haven't answered the question (because you can't) except to use the laughable example of the fixed space on a ship, you have only been trying to cover up your poor knowledge on the subject, I did try, but at least now it's clear I don't need to bother with you, as you have proven to be disingenuous and any further discussion with you will be fruitless, time to be with more able people ;)    

You’ll see above that I answered your question. You expressed incredulity that left/right/Center could have a set of constants recognized worldwide, and you were given an example not even you could refute, driving a wooden stake through the heart of your incredulity. Turns out it’s not so difficult to imagine how, after all. Not my problem if you can’t keep up.

Your entire premise is complete bullshit. I did the math myself, and even if ALL Green Party voters had switched to the Democratic Party, it would have no been enough to win the election. Also, logically speaking, if you add all the GP votes to the Dems, then you also have to add all the Libertarian votes to the GOP, in which case Trump would have had the same margin of victory as before.

Bernie Or Bust was never really a thing. In fact, more Bernie voters voted for Clinton than Clinton voters voted for Obama.

Hopefully.

Hopefully they can repeal Medicare and Medicaid too.

Do you know what would be a lot more help for those with chronic Hepatitis  C infections? If the pills didn't cost $500 to $1000 each.

Also, your lack of awareness regarding Gilead Sciences is hilariously in plain view. For you see, Gilead Sciences had nothing to do with the creation of Sovaldi. No, that drug was researched and created by Pharmasset. The only thing Gilead do was buy out Pharmasset. That's all Gilead ever does. They buy out other companies who already did the research and then gouge prices so high despite them never spending a dollar on the actual R&D.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of this particular drug, how its actual production costs are less than 1% of the current price, how R&D was largely funded by the US government, and how little R&D Gilead actually put into the drug, do check out this article as it established a great deal of information: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-drug-that-is-bankrupt_b_6692340.html

So I do thank you for not doing hardly any research (you actually thought that Gilead brought about Sovaldi) and for highlighting yet another reason big pharma is terrible. They have other people do the research, usually with funding from the government, and then buy up those people and market the drug for pure profit.

I don't think anyone is saying that private companies are evil, but they are not good either. Private companies have a sole objective; to make money. Problem is, healthcare is just like education, fire safety or police protection; people need it regardless of if someone makes money of it or not. That is why a private company can make huge profits from it and which is why prices for the private sector are way, way higher than for the public sector since the public sector doesn't need to make a profit. How it possibly affect innovation is hard to judge considering that the public sector in other countries make great innovations as well but the US is quite successful in the field.

It was a $10B+ investment along with the fact that there are now less suitable patients than before because less people get infected with Hepatitis C since a cure is available so it is reasonable why Gilead would charge the drug relatively high prices but when you compare the other available alternative which is paying half a million dollars for a liver transplant with the possibility of a transplant rejection, Sovaldi seemed like a steal by comparison ... 

I'm surprised why Gilead didn't charge as much as 400K for the entire treatment cause it still would've been a pretty good deal since it was undercutting the next best thing by about 100K which was a transplant operation and the other upside was not having to deal with a graft vs host disease ... 

Besides, pricing was only a temporary setback for a huge leap forward for the rest of humanity ... 

I am aware that drug was originally developed at Pharmasset however, with that being said it does not explain the gap in the length between the acquisition (2011) and FDA approval (2013) for the drug candidate. The drug candidate at the time was still very much in development and I imagine it was sometime during phase 2 clinical trials that the acquisition took place but Gilead still had to takeover operations to get the drug to market ... 

The statement "they buy out other companies who already did the research and then gouge prices so high despite them never spending a dollar on the actual R&D" is ultimately not true and in the end is just empty. Now what's hilariously in plain view is you corroborating these baseless claims ...  

What makes your statement even more dubious was Gilead's introduction of Harvoni (extra funds to develop) which was an even more potent Hepatits C cure than Sovaldi was ...

@Bold Now that's a patently false statement if I've ever seen one ...  

If you actually read the article you would know that Pharmasset had an IPO of $45M in 2007 which likely meant that whatever government contributions were towards Dr. Schinazi's initial findings it never exceeded that amount. By comparison Gilead had purchased Pharmasset for $10B+ so public funding contributions obviously paled in comparison to what Gilead had to pour in ... 

Just because the NIH gave Dr. Schinazi some funds to create some compounds in a university laboratory does not mean that drug development was largely finished. It's easy to create several dozen candidates but it's hard to show that any of them are safe and effective for human consumption when they undergo live clinical trials ... 

Funding from the government is not very useful ... 

NIH studies =/= Pharma studies 

What the NIH looks at is often very generalized biomedical research. What big pharma wants to know is if it's targetable or not to be able to make a drug candidate that can trigger an effective response ... (much of biology research is just crap to pharma companies and maybe it's less so for biochemistry research) 

The way public funding is setup is not that useful now and big pharma likely wouldn't miss much if the NIH was abolished since they can likely absorb whatever minuscule costs they truly covered. Much of the pre-clinical study is covered by biotech startups rather than universities which already diminishes their role to drug development and then when they get to phase 2 or 3 clinical trials they either go big by being acquired by a larger pharma corporation to further their funds or some turn out to become pharma companies by themselves ... 

It's really funny how a bunch of armchair experts like yourself keep insisting solutions towards applied scientists (at which I'm pursuing a specialty in) who probably knows far better than you do at their own game but since you're so eager to thwart big pharma yourself maybe you should take up the mantle of enrolling in your local or state school's doctor of pharmacology program so that you can be the genius visionary that can bring new drugs a breakneck pace for pennies to put them to shame if you actually can ...  

Considering the number of people in the US with Chronic HCV is estimated to be 3,5 million, that investment would pay for itself within a few years with those prices, so it´s obvious that the prices are set to maximize profit. That is the correct way for a company to go about it, but it is rather an argument for the government to do the research instead.