I wonder if Cuomo would decry the same way the R&D costs, cost effectiveness and prices of
HIV-AIDS drugs over the last 3 decades, or if she would deem it silly to try to extend the life of an HIV-AIDS patient?
(Never mind the fact that AIDS has gone from being a slow, agonizing and costly death sentence to
now being a manageable chronic disease with which people live decades beyond the date many predicted they'd die before).........
"....If the process for developing HIV drugs has been unusual, selling them has been even more so. America is the rich world's biggest market, with 841,000 patients diagnosed—ten times as many as in Britain.
More than 60% of HIV drugs in America are bought with public money.
Insurers give HIV special treatment: patients are rarely pressed to buy the cheapest pills, as they might be if they had another disease.
Distributing drugs in poor countries is harder. A decade ago, hardly any poor people could afford them. At first, drugs firms handled this badly. In 1998, 39 big Western firms sued South Africa to protect their HIV patents. Global uproar ensued; the firms backed down in 2001.
Then two things changed. First, rich countries started donating vast sums to fight AIDS in poor ones. In 2000 there was less than $2 billion for HIV programmes each year; by 2010 there was $15 billion, thanks to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and George Bush junior's President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Second, the price of AIDS drugs plunged. In May 2000 a year's “triple cocktail” therapy cost $10,000 or so. By 2011 the same pills sold for $62 in poor countries. PEPFAR cash buys generic versions of patented drugs, which may be supplied only to poor countries....."
The business of HIV: Battling the virus | The Economist