Fiery freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., berated a drug company official Thursday for charging over $1,700 for medication to cut the risk of HIV transmission when the same drug costs only $8 in Australia.
In an exchange posted on Twitter, the lawmaker grilled the chief executive officer of Gilead about pricing of Truvada, a prophylactic treatment for HIV or AIDs that reduces the risk of infection.
"Is it true that Gilead made $3 billion in profits from Truvada in 2018?" Ocasio-Cortez asked CEO Daniel O'Day.
"$3 billion in revenue," he corrected.
"The current list price [of Truvada] is $2,000 a month in the United States, correct?" she pressed.
"It's $1,780 in the United States," O'Day responded.
"Why is it $8 in Australia?" Ocasio-Cortez countered.
"Truvada still has patent protection in the United States and in the rest of the world it is generic," O'Day said, adding: "It will be generically available in the United States as of September 2020."
"I think it's important here that we notice that we the public, we the people, developed this drug. We paid for this drug, we lead and developed all the patents to create [pre-exposure prophylaxis] and then that patent has been privatized despite the fact that the patent is owned by the public, who refused to enforce it," Ocasio-Cortez said.
“There’s no reason this should be $2,000 a month. People are dying because of it and there’s no enforceable reason for it.”
Truvada was developed through work by Thomas Folks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as through $50 million in federal grant money to San Franciso-based AIDS researcher Robert Grant, Business Insider reported. The government patented the treatment in 2015.
“Our well-supported view is that the U.S. government does not hold valid patents on the use of Truvada for pre-exposure prophylaxis, nor does it hold any patent for Truvada itself,’’ O’Day said in prepared testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, the Washington Post reported.
Related Stories:
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.