Certainly you've touched on an important part of this, which is that these are new, are ground-breaking, are game-changers, and they're lifesavers. They're also expensive; there's no question. When you're in the biologics space, you're into a very different game. You require some fairly significant infrastructure to create the therapy, so there is an expense there. That's one part of the equation.
The other part, which I think we struggle with, is that this is presented in a very binary way, which is that it costs $100,000 a year for a patient, with no recognition of the cost if the patient didn't have the therapy available. It's not like you stop all health care treatment for patients if they're not able to get the therapy, so there is a cost. If a patient has leukemia or arthritis or diabetes, you look at long-term treatment costs to that patient and to the system as well, and without necessarily better outcomes, but there still is an expense. We have to take that into account as well.
That's not to say this is not going to put pressure on the system. There's no question it is putting pressure on the system. There have to be solutions. I think pharmacare presents some options. I have yet to see a distinct definition of what pharmacare actually is, so it's hard for me to provide you with exact comments as to what it would be and what it would entail. That's why the industry would like to be part of developing the solution process, because obviously, we're a big part of what needs to be addressed in terms of patient care.
Certainly, we would like to be at the table of whatever design that is, to make sure that we're doing it in the proper way, that we can contribute our expertise to it as well, and that also payers understand what's coming. There are more of these coming; there's no question. They're remarkable advancements.