Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Business

How Gilead Priced Its $20 Billion Blockbuster

  • Gilead documents provide a rare glimpse into price decisions
  • `We have to get most of the way there in the initial pricing'
Video player cover image

Why Do Drug Prices Keep Going Up?

Updated on

From the start, the miracle drug was expected to carry a high price tag: $36,000 to treat each patient.

Over the two years leading up to the medicine’s 2013 launch, Gilead Sciences Inc. executives and advisers inched the number higher, to about $65,000, then to $81,000, then to $84,000 -- or $1,000 a pill for the 12-week treatment -- as they homed in on a price that was just below where they thought insurers would add significant restrictions for the breakthrough hepatitis C remedy.