In 2014 the pharmaceutical giant Gilead priced its new treatment for the life-threatening hepatitis C virus, Harvoni, at $94,500 for a three-month course. Gilead justified charging this price by insisting that it represented ‘value’ to health systems. John LaMattina, former President of R&D at the drugs company Pfizer, argued that the high price of speciality drugs is justified by how beneficial they are for patients and for society in general. In practice, this means relating the price of a drug to the costs that the disease would cause to society if not treated, or if treated with the
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