Big Pharma Is the Only Reason Anyone Still Dies From HIV

By 2019, the pharma company had made $36 billion in profits from Truvada thanks in part to pricing that followed no logical line of reasoning. When it was first approved as a treatment for HIV in 2004, Gilead charged $7,800 per year for treatment. By 2019 the cost had ballooned to $20,000 per year. Similar drug combinations to Truvada were available in other countries for as little as $60 per year.

To combat bad PR, Gilead promised to donate 2.4 million vials of PrEP each year for eleven years to 200,000 uninsured individuals at risk of contracting HIV. While this is a nice gesture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were 1.1 million Americans “at substantial risk for HIV” who “should be offered PrEP.”

Testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Tim Horn, Director of Medication Access and Pricing at the National Alliance of State & Territorial AIDS Directors, or NASTAD,, accused the pharma giant of using donation tactics to mask the impact high prices were having on access for the uninsured. “To be clear, these programs are not a substitute for functioning public health and healthcare systems,” he said. “Partnerships with pharmaceutical manufacturers will always be important, but outsized dependency on their generosity – which, in turn, is dependent on their bottom line – is by no means a solution.”