Medicine Today, Money Tomorrow

How today’s Big Pharma will merge with tomorrow’s Big Finance

“Labelled glass bottles with various powders and liquids” by Matt Briney on Unsplash

Gilead, a major Big Pharma company, is in a bit of a bind. Their problem? Sales of some of their key drugs are tanking. Why’s that? Because they work too well.

In 2013, the United States FDA approved Gilead’s new hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi. Immediately, patients who might otherwise need a liver transplant or face death were lining up to pay Gilead’s lofty asking price of $1,000 per pill. They were willing to shell out their savings (or yours, via rising insurance premiums) for the new drug because it worked amazingly well, curing upwards of 90% of hepatitis C patients.

Sales of Sovaldi soared as soon as it launched, ditto for Harvoni, Gilead’s other blockbuster hep. C drug. Fast forward a few years, and things aren’t looking so hot for these drugs, or Gilead’s stock price:

Sovaldi and Harvoni were all the rage in 2014–2015, but then an odd thing began to happen: there were fewer and fewer patients sick with hepatitis C. Gilead’s drugs had cured the bulk of them, and now the target market for the drugs was starting to dry up. Gilead’s stock price…