COLUMBUS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sovaldi, the hepatitis C wonder drug, sells for $84,000 in the U.S. but for only $83 in Egypt, says the British tabloid the Daily Mail. The newspaper also reports Egyptian entrepreneurs are providing round-trip air fare to Egypt, a five day tour of the countryside and a Sovaldi cure for $7,000 to foreigners.
In 2014, Gilead Sciences agreed to make Sovaldi available for about $900 per treatment to Egypt. Whether it’s $83 or $900, U.S. consumers and taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the treatment of hundreds of thousands of hepatitis C sufferers in Egypt while in the U.S. Sovaldi’s price tag has forced Medicaid and private insurers to ration the drug, making it available only to persons in the final stages of the potentially deadly liver disease.
Source: Daily Mail and Reuters.
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