Californians for Lower Drug Prices
has put up several giant billboard ads in Los Angeles decrying the high cost of the Hep C drug Harvoni.

It sells for $1,095 per pill.

Take two Harvoni pills and you blow up your rent money.

Californians for Lower Drug Prices is sponsoring a measure on the November ballot that, if approved by voters, will help put a lid on the cost of drugs purchased by the state of California.

Here is what Roger Salazar in Sacramento wrote about the subject:

Californians for Lower Drug Prices, the proponent of the California Drug Price Relief Act of 2016, today launched a billboard campaign highlighting the obscene cost of prescription drugs. The ads note that it costs $1,095 for one Harvoni pill, a treatment for hepatitis C, and urges Californians to visit www.StopPharmaGreed.com for more information.

The initial run of billboard ads is in the Los Angeles area.

The headline refers to pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences’ costly hep C treatment Harvoni, with a price point that demonstrates the severe extent of the drug-pricing issue in the U.S.

A full three-month treatment regimen with the drug – which cures the deadly disease in most patients – costs nearly $100,000, or more than $1,000 per pill.

Harvoni and its earlier sister hep C medication, Sovaldi, top the list of the most expensive prescription drugs in the U.S. Pharmasset, Inc., the initial developer of Sovaldi, projected a “U.S. base rate of $36,000 per [12-week] course of treatment” in a 2011 SEC filing. After Gilead purchased Pharmasset, it raised the price tag for a course of treatment with Sovaldi to $84,000.

Prices charged for Sovaldi and Harvoni are proof that price increases are driven primarily by profits, not research and development costs, as drug companies claim. The high cost and great demand for hep C drugs have strained the budgets of state Medicaid programs and prison systems, forcing many of them to ration treatment to those most seriously ill.

The Drug Price Relief Act would require the state to negotiate with drug companies for drug prices that are no more than is paid for the same drugs by the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs. Unlike Medicare, the VA negotiates for drug prices on behalf of the nearly 22 million veterans it serves, and pays on average 20-24 percent less for medications than other government agencies, and up to 40 percent less than Medicare Part D. The Drug Price Relief Act empowers the state, as the healthcare buyer for millions of Californians, to negotiate the same or an even better deal for taxpayers, saving the state billions.

Mr. Schwada may be contacted at john.schwada@gmail.com