Congress Questions High Price of Revolutionary Pill

Members of congress have contacted the chief executive officer of drug company Gilead Sciences Inc. requesting a briefing so that the company's experts can explain why a revolutionary and potentially life-saving treatment of Hepatitis C costs an estimated $1000 a pill.

Gilead Sciences originally filled headlines after successfully producing a "breakthrough treatment" for a hepatitis C infection" that had earned the approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hepatitis C is a liver disease that results from a viral infection. An infection can be very serious, potentially lasting as a lifelong illness that can even end in death. Past statistic indicate that an estimated 3.2 million American have a chronic (long-term) hepatitis C infection, and about 15,000 deaths result from these infections annually.

According to the FDA, there is no current vaccine to prevent a hepatitis C infection. However, Gilead Sciences Inc.'s new drug, Sovaldi, has proven that it can effectively meet an unmet medical need for treatment, successfully " treat[ing] multiple type of the hepatitis C virus ... demonstrat[ing] efficacy in participants who could not tolerate or take an infection-based treatment regimen and in participants with liver cancer awaiting transplantation," according to the FDA.

However, a recent Washington Post report had revealed to legislatures that insurance companies are estimating that this game-changing drug will likely sell at $84,000 per 12-week treatment, costing an estimated $1000 for a single pill. A recent Reuters report congress members are also citing explains that many doctors are even requesting that patients undergo a treatment combination of Sovaldi and Olysio or GS-5816 -- a second generation gene inhibitor -- which costs about $150,000 per treatment.

On March 20, Democratic members of Congress Henry Waxman of California, Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey and Diana DeGette of Colorado sent a letter to Gilead Sciences questioning these exceptionally high prices. The wrote about their concern that the potential cure would be made exclusive to upper-income patients alone because of it's costs to consumers.

In a response to the letter Gregg Alton, Gilead's executive vice president for corporate and medical affairs, said the drug company is willing to brief congress in the future about the pricing. For now, the company has issued a short statement explaining that the price is the "fairest possible" considering current production costs and demand, according to reports from The Almagest on Tuesday.

The letter from congress was released on March 20.