>Perhaps motivated by the high costs to taxpayers, lawmakers are pushing Gilead to explain why it charges so much. It doesn't help that Gilead is offering Sovaldi in Egypt at a 99 percent discount to U.S. prices, or about $900 for a full course of treatment.
I wonder how difficult it would be (from a legal perspective) to take a 3 month vacation to Egypt and save almost six figures.
A 3 month vacation to Egypt isn't free. Even if you can live cheaply, you'll still likely have bills that you need to continue paying in the US.
I guess this could work if you can sever all financial ties to the US for 3 months and still have enough money to live in Egypt, pay for the medicine, then come back to the US and restart your life.
You'd need to take a sabbatical from your work in the US, rent an apartment in Egypt, and continue to pay bills in the US.
But given that by doing so you'd be saving $83,000, that still sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I'd imagine you can live pretty nicely in Egypt for a lot less than $27,666 per month...
Egypt wouldn't be my first choice for medical tourism, even for cheap pharms. The primary source of Egypt's incredibly high HCV infection rate was through medical treatment -- inadequate sterilization of glass syringes and inadequate surveillance of stored blood for transfusions. As a result, HCV spread like wildfire through the population, and secondary infection routes like tattoo parlors keep the virus circulating.
I wonder how difficult it would be (from a legal perspective) to take a 3 month vacation to Egypt and save almost six figures.