18 September 2018 - In the United States, pharmaceutical companies have built a system which supports high costs for H.I.V. drugs. But that may be starting to change.

A new gold-standard triple therapy for H.I.V. has just made its debut in Africa. It costs $75 a year. In the United States, many people with H.I.V. take an almost identical therapy. It costs $39,000 a year.

The United States is infamous for its high cost of health care — and H.I.V. medicines are a big part of that. Plenty of drugs carry outrageous prices: EpiPens, insulin, cancer treatments, even some antibiotics. But no class of medicines is more scandalously expensive than for H.I.V. These medicines are by far the largest item in Medicaid’s drug budget, the third largest for the insurance exchanges and the fifth largest for commercial insurers.

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