Pharmasset spent in the ballpark of $1 billion developing the candidate that Gilead decided to buy (I&#x27;m taking the annual spend on total operations there, rounding up to $100 million and multiplying by 10 to get the $1 billion).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sec.gov&#x2F;Archives&#x2F;edgar&#x2F;data&#x2F;882095&#x2F;000119312511331318&#x2F;d260880dex991.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sec.gov&#x2F;Archives&#x2F;edgar&#x2F;data&#x2F;882095&#x2F;0001193125113...</a><p>It sort of looks like they have figured out how to have excellent pricing power when they are willing to bid $11 billion for the company. Part of that is probably that looking just at this drug is a facile analysis of the value of Pharmasset (which did more than develop 1 drug, they built expertise in creating antivirals). Of course, the expertise story implies that they don&#x27;t need to recover the purchase on just this drug.<p>I guess some of it is the complexity in the medical payments system.