Is there any reason to believe that PEPFAR brought prices down? Why not count Clinton lobbying for price discrimination as economists getting this 100% right? If economists missed the importance of R&D, that’s bad, but was it important, or was it just about releasing patents?
It’s pretty much common knowledge about the pharma industry. But here’s a decent Wikipedia page:
High-income countries have had issues involving expensive patented antiretroviral drugs; for example, in 2016 the TDF/FTV/EFV treatment was approximately $30,000 per patient per year in the US, whereas the generic medication only costed $100 per patient per year
I think this was wrong. I don’t know where I heard the story about Clinton negotiating price discrimination, but, actually, generics already existed in 2001 before either PEPFAR or Clinton started buying. PEPFAR simply refused to use them because it wasn’t actually about saving lives. It switched in 2006 because it was embarrassed by Clinton and WHO using them.
Oster seemed to be aware that PEPFAR was paying 10x as much as WHO, as she writes “Even at generic drug prices.” It is a travesty that she didn’t draw attention to this.
PEPFAR wasn’t a humanitarian program, but a giveaway to drug companies. It is good that humanitarians stole the money and gave it to public health, but that’s no credit to the people who pretended to do charity in the first place. And the cost effectiveness of the project of entering government and stealing money has to be judged by all the people who tried and failed, not just by one project. If this were a real public health project, it would be good to hold it up to tell the other public health projects to be more like it, but it was a sham and telling the other shams to be more like it is unlikely to be effective.
Is there any reason to believe that PEPFAR brought prices down? Why not count Clinton lobbying for price discrimination as economists getting this 100% right? If economists missed the importance of R&D, that’s bad, but was it important, or was it just about releasing patents?
Most drug prices are largely driven by patents, and ARVs were as well.
Where do you get the claim about ARVs?
It’s pretty much common knowledge about the pharma industry. But here’s a decent Wikipedia page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_HIV_treatment
The patents all expired by 2016, so this contradicts your claim.
I think this was wrong. I don’t know where I heard the story about Clinton negotiating price discrimination, but, actually, generics already existed in 2001 before either PEPFAR or Clinton started buying. PEPFAR simply refused to use them because it wasn’t actually about saving lives. It switched in 2006 because it was embarrassed by Clinton and WHO using them.
Oster seemed to be aware that PEPFAR was paying 10x as much as WHO, as she writes “Even at generic drug prices.” It is a travesty that she didn’t draw attention to this.
PEPFAR wasn’t a humanitarian program, but a giveaway to drug companies. It is good that humanitarians stole the money and gave it to public health, but that’s no credit to the people who pretended to do charity in the first place. And the cost effectiveness of the project of entering government and stealing money has to be judged by all the people who tried and failed, not just by one project. If this were a real public health project, it would be good to hold it up to tell the other public health projects to be more like it, but it was a sham and telling the other shams to be more like it is unlikely to be effective.