Comment by terminalshort
10 hours ago
What is the significance of 7-10B if it is "possibly much more than that"? Even if it was $15 billion that's a 15% margin. How is that scandalous pricing?
10 hours ago
What is the significance of 7-10B if it is "possibly much more than that"? Even if it was $15 billion that's a 15% margin. How is that scandalous pricing?
$7-10B was a lower bound. The actual amount of profit is difficult to determine.
Their pricing was considered high enough that it led to a Senate investigation and quite a lot of litigation. (Which likely dug into their profits.)
> https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/company-put-profi...
They could have priced it lower and still have turned a healthy profit. Still, they played the rules of the game as those rules were set, which a Goldman Sachs analyst, at least, ought to appreciate. There's nothing inherently unprofitable about cures, and the nature of the drug development business is inherently unsustainable.
The Senate has investigated ticket scalping at a Taylor Swift concert in Washington DC. That means nothing beyond "it's expensive and that makes me angry!" Yes, they could have priced it lower. 10% lower. (Of course that would have meant $10 billion less for other research and potential disease cures, but who has time to think about that!) And you know what would have happened? The Senate would have investigated because "that's still expensive and it makes me angry!"
I do agree with your point that curing diseases is profitable.