It's not what they spent developing Sovaldi -- it's the fortune the industry as a whole spends developing drugs that never make it to market.
That said, it's quite likely true that marketing is a bigger share of costs than R&D. Pharma companies are out there to maximize revenue, just like any other corporation. It's a reflection of the poor state of regulation in the US that we pay far more of than our share (compared to the rest of the world).
Here's the piece of the picture that everyone's missing from this particular example - an $11b acquisition [1]. Gilead bought Pharmasset for $11b. It no longer matters what it cost Pharmasset to research/test/approve/produce the medicine anymore. Certainly all of that was factored into the acquisition price but since Gilead's total cost ended up being $11b, that is what they need to recoup at the least.
There are 3.2 million hep C patients in the US [2] but most don't feel ill or even know they have hep C. If every single person buys the drug, Gilead must still sell it for at least $11b / 3.2m = $3500/person! But if only 5% buy the drug, they need to sell it for $69,000 just to break event on the acquisition without even taking any other costs into account.
This is just rough calculation to highlight that a sky high acquisition price resulted in a company demanding an equally high price per dose. Gilead paid the high price to acquire Pharmasset because they thought they could sell the drug for at such a high price per dose. If Gilead is proven right (and their stock price from $18 in 2011 to $100 in 2015 seems to reflect that indeed), then this just encourages more and more drug companies to be bought at astronomical prices.
And the worst part of this is that the very government that gave this company the right to operate a monopoly via a patent is now asking them why they're charging so much [3]. None of this happened because of some singular evil cabal. It happened due to misaligned incentives.
Government grants pay researchers, who develop medicines at paid-for-by-public-funds university labs, which sell the patents back to the researchers at fire-sale prices, who then go on to create biotech startups, which productize the research, and then sell to Fortune 100 pharmas, who can then demand almost any amount of money, which CMS will have to pay because USPTO said nobody else can sell this drug, FDA agreed that the drug works, and ACA ensures that the patients cannot be denied any drugs that work at any cost.
well that's nice and all, so next time CEO wants a new fleet of jet aircrafts for him, all should pay more for the medicines? Because, you know, we can?
Companies should definitely make profit, but their default modus operandi is "milk the cow as long as possible", which would directly result in many deaths... not much sympathy from the crowd there. Let's not forget simple math here - company is/was charging for medicine that doesn't cost more than few tens of bucks to produce... 69,000? Sorry, ridiculous all the way through. Don't care about research bla-bla
Just turn on that weird device that used to be called TV. During winter, 1/3 of the adds are medicines. Who pays for those adds? All those who buy medicines...
Of course you wouldn't, since that's what costs billions to discover the medication that eventually costs "tens of bucks" to produce, which completely undermines your argument.
One reason we pay so much more is that one lawsuit can cost a company billions. In a place like China, good luck suing anyone and actually winning.
Elimination of punitive damages or more importantly making punitive damages excluded from lawyer commissions would be a step in the right direction. Additionally, punitive damages ought not go to the complainant, but to the taxpayer and thus funneled into grants, etc for basic science research to potentially lower the costs of future development. The only person that benefits from a punitive award is the lawyer and the 'victim.' Lawsuits should not be a lottery ticket.
Isn't that because the US disallows importing drugs? It's supposedly for safety but of course it's just protectionism as I, at least, have heard of no other country doing the same.
This would be easy to study, figure out, and possibly come to conclusive results over: examine the budgets and expenses of pharmaceutical R&D departments.
That said, it's quite likely true that marketing is a bigger share of costs than R&D. Pharma companies are out there to maximize revenue, just like any other corporation. It's a reflection of the poor state of regulation in the US that we pay far more of than our share (compared to the rest of the world).