ABSTRACT
This chapter, invokes the theory of innovative enterprise to explain how and why high drug prices restrict access to medicines and undermine medical innovation. US pharmaceutical companies claim that high drug prices fund investments in innovation. By using stock buybacks to boost stock prices, executives can augment gains that they realize from exercising options or the vesting of awards. The greed of Gilead's top executives, sanctioned by MSV ideology, is preventing millions of people with HCV in the United States and abroad from accessing Sovaldi/Harvoni at an affordable cost. MSV is a profit-driven ideology that results in high drug prices and restricted access to existing medicines. A primary policy objective of all government agencies, civil society organizations, and business enterprises that seek innovative and affordable drugs should be the eradication of MSV as an ideology of corporate governance. Aided by government regulation and progressive social norms, US pharmaceutical companies need to reject MSV and begin the transformation to innovative enterprise.
