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Gilead's Covid-19 drug costs $1 but priced between $2,300-$3,100, is Trump allowing it to steal from Americans?

'Oxford University is giving its vaccine away for free. @realDonaldTrump is allowing Gilead to steal from Americans' says the Internet

Gilead's Remdesivir, the only Covid-19 drug approved for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration seems to have landed in a soup. After its launch, one question on all minds was: how much would it cost? The price was fixed for governments of developed countries $390 per vial for a patient and the full course treatment at $2,340. In the US, the same price will apply for government programs such as Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense hospitals. Private insurance companies, however, will have to shell out $520 per vial, coming up to $3,120 per patient.

However, several reports and news on social media claim that US President Donald Trump is allowing Gilead to steal from Americans for the drug cost. A tweet from Office of the State Treasurer read: "Remdesivir manufacturer, Gilead, just set the price for the COVID-19 treatment: between $2,300 and $3,100 per patient. @icer_review estimates the treatment costs approx. $1 per vital to produce. $1."

The Twitter thread further read: "We’ve lost more than 150,000 Americans to COVID-19. Now is not the time to squeeze extravagant costs from hospitals, taxpayers, or families for a vial that costs only $1 to create," and continued, "That’s why, as a shareholder, we are calling on Gilead to reconsider their pricing, to make the drug more accessible for the folks who have already paid millions of dollars in taxpayer dollars to develop."

The tweet soon went viral with over 12,000 retweets and 16,000 likes and sparked much fury on the Internet, especially about how Trump was stealing from Americans. "Oxford University is giving its vaccine away for free. @realDonaldTrump is allowing Gilead to steal from Americans. Your tax dollars paid to develop their vaccine - and want to charge you $3000 each for a dose that costs them $1," one tweet read and another said, "Gilead took millions in taxpayer money to develop Remdesivir, a failed Ebola drug, which costs pennies to make. Yet Gilead is charging patients more than $3000 per treatment that clinical trials show doesn’t improve survival and is inferior to dexamethasone, a much cheaper drug."

"We already paid Gilead at least $70.5 million dollars in public (tax) money to develop remdesivir. Why are we publicly funding them only to have them price gouge? Why is it okay for companies to reap the benefits of socialism, only to serve us up "unfettered" capitalism?" one Twitter user questioned, another said, "The production price for the leading COVID drug, Remdesivir, is $1 per patient. It's manufacturer, Gilead, charges $2,500 per patient. It was developed with TAXPAYER money."

Another questioned: "@GileadSciences you charge $60 in the UK for the same treatment that costs Americans $3,000. Why?" Another said, "#Gilead is a product of the inhumane greed that exists in our non-functional fully capitalized health care system. It is a contributing force to the massive failure that has been our response and suffering from COVID-19, disproportionate to any other country on the planet." One even went on to say: "Everyone pissed about Gilead and how much they're charging for Remdesivir need to realize that's the exact reason there's a war on hydroxychloroquine. It's cheap. Follow the money."