Australian government subsidizes expensive hepatitis C drugs BMS and Gilead for us $1 billion

Source: China Council for the promotion of drugs 2015-12-24 the Australian federal government hopes to eradicate hepatitis C virus from the territory, for which, the country plans to allocate US $1 billion to purchase hepatitis C drugs This is good news for liver C drug giants Gilead and BMS According to Sky News, Australia is preparing to allocate one billion dollars to help all hepatitis C patients purchase hepatitis C treatment drugs, including sowaldi and harvoni of Gilead, daklinza of BMS and ibavyr of ribavirin tablet of pendopharm The authorities hope that this investment will eradicate hepatitis C virus from the territory within 20 years The move, called "game changer" by health minister Susan Ley, will reduce the expensive cost of treating hepatitis C from nearly $100000 (about $465000) to just $6.1 (about $28.4) for preferential patients and only $37.7 (about $175.2) for ordinary patients Compared with Australia, the availability of hepatitis C drugs in the United States is much worse Many patients who use hepatitis C drugs are not covered by the reimbursement, especially those who participate in the Medicaid project However, sales of Geely and BMS in the U.S market far exceeded the sales surge in Australia brought about by the move In 2014, Medicare allocated nearly $700 million for combination therapy harvoni, which was only approved for marketing in October of that year Sovaldi, which was approved before 2014, received $3.11 billion from Medicare This may be because the Medicare & Medicaid service center in the United States is unable to fight for low prices from pharmaceutical companies, while other governments spend a lot of money negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, so it is not too expensive to achieve free treatment of hepatitis C For example, in November last year, France purchased sovaldi at the lowest price in Europe, paying only 13667 euros per box, 5000 euros less than the original price in the country, so as to provide free drugs to all patients in the country The government offers each patient a 12 week course of treatment worth $51000, compared with $84000 in the United States Original link: http://