--- title: Senate Blames Greed for $1,000 Hepatitis C Drug description: New report slams sellers of $1,000 pill for putting profits over people authors: - name: Denver Nicks url: https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/ at_money_since: 2015 articles: 60 covers: - Economy and Politics - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit Cards - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Personal Finance - Pets - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes social: - https://x.com/DenverNicks - https://plus.google.com/105122198911201917932 former_staff: true published: '2015-12-01T21:58:09.000Z' modified: '2024-04-16T09:12:07.000Z' section: Economy and Politics tags: - big pharma - Drugs - gilead - health insurance - Healthcare - hepititis - Pharma - pubdesk word_count: 275 canonical: https://money.com/senate-blames-greed-1000-hepatitis-c-drug-sovaldi/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![The Gilead Sciences Inc. sign is seen outside the company's](https://img.money.com/2015/12/94576455.jpg) *UNITED STATES - MARCH 29: The Gilead Sciences Inc. sign is seen outside the company's headquarters in Foster City, California, on Thursday, March 29, 2007. Biotechnology companies including Genentech Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc. can't find enough scientists to hire, threatening to slow one of the industries bolstering U.S. job growth. (Photo by Kimberly White/Bloomberg via Getty Images)* A new report out Tuesday from the Senate Finance Committee slams Gilead, maker’s of a $1,000-per-pill Hepatitis C treatment, for pursuing a greedy business model with no regard for the human lives affected. "Gilead pursued a calculated scheme for pricing and marketing its Hepatitis C drug based on one primary goal, maximizing revenue, regardless of the human consequences," Oregon Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden said in a statement. Gilead’s Sovaldi pill is designed to eradicate Hepatitis in a weeks-long regiment that costs around $84,000 start to finish, reports NBC News. The cost, Senators argued Tuesday, put the drug out of reach of millions of patients and severely burdened Medicare and Medicaid. "If Gilead's approach to pricing is the future of how blockbuster drugs are launched, it will cost billions and billions of dollars to treat just a fraction of patients,” Wyden said. In a statement, Gilead the company “respectfully disagree(s) with the conclusions of their report.” “Gilead responsibly and thoughtfully priced Sovaldi and Harvoni,” the company added. "With the rebates and discounts now in place, the prices today are less than the cost of prior regimens, even though our therapies have significantly higher cure rates and very few side effects.” According to the Senate report Medicade programs nationwide spent $1.3 billion on the drug before rebates in 2014, and still less than 2.4 percent of the roughly 700,000 Hepatitis C patients on Medicaid were treated with the drug. The prices of pharmaceuticals have come under [increasing scrutiny](https://money.com/prescription-drug-prices-america/) in recent years due to concerns over price-gouging and the extreme disparity between what Americans pay for drugs and the lower prices paid by people in other wealthy countries. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/senate-blames-greed-1000-hepatitis-c-drug-sovaldi/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Economy and Politics", "item": "https://money.com/economy-and-politics/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Pharmaceutical Industry", "item": "https://money.com/pharmaceutical-industry/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Senate Blames Greed for $1,000 Hepatitis C Drug" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/senate-blames-greed-1000-hepatitis-c-drug-sovaldi/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/senate-blames-greed-1000-hepatitis-c-drug-sovaldi/", "name": "Senate Blames Greed for $1,000 Hepatitis C Drug", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2015-12-01T21:58:09.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/senate-blames-greed-1000-hepatitis-c-drug-sovaldi/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/senate-blames-greed-1000-hepatitis-c-drug-sovaldi/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-04-16T09:12:07.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "Senate Blames Greed for $1,000 Hepatitis C Drug", "articleSection": "Economy and Politics", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2015/12/94576455.jpg", "width": 594, "height": 435, "caption": "The Gilead Sciences Inc. sign is seen outside the company's" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Denver Nicks", "url": "https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/#author", "image": "https://img.money.com/2012/09/09_1165862081.jpg?quality=85&w=640&h=640&crop=1", "sameAs": [ "https://x.com/DenverNicks", "https://plus.google.com/105122198911201917932" ] } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2015-12-01T21:58:09.000Z", "description": "New report slams sellers of $1,000 pill for putting profits over people", "abstract": "New report slams sellers of $1,000 pill for putting profits over people", "@id": "https://money.com/senate-blames-greed-1000-hepatitis-c-drug-sovaldi/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2024-04-16T09:12:07.000Z", "wordCount": 275, "keywords": [ "big pharma", "Drugs", "gilead", "health insurance", "Healthcare", "hepititis", "Pharma", "pubdesk" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Political economy", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Pharmaceutical industry", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry" ] } ] } ] } ```