Gilead should be commended for taking action to make their best-selling treatment for Hepatitis C, Sovaldi, available to more people around the world. In India, they’ve struck licensing agreements with generic firms to produce the product for pennies on the dollar. Unfortunately, Gilead’s largess is being funded largely on the backs of American families.

Over the last several months there has been a ‘plateau and downward trend’ in the use of Gilead Sciences Inc’s controversial $1,000-a-pill hepatitis C treatment, Sovaldi, a CVS Health Corp analysis showed.

Gilead announced that it had struck agreements with seven Indian generic drug makers to sell lower-cost versions of its $1,000-a-pill Hepatitis C drug in poorer countries. The deals are intended to provide greater access to the medicine Sovaldi for most of the nearly 180 million infected worldwide with Hepatitis C who do not live in rich countries. Some 350,000 people die every year of Hepatitis C infections, most of them in middle- and low-income nations.

Runaway drug pricing has become a recent hot topic, witnessed best by the media and political bashing of Gilead Sciences (GILD_) for the $1,000-per-day cost of its hepatitis C pill Sovaldi.

There are a lot of innovative therapies with encouraging prospects and eye-popping price tags in the news lately. All of them pose hard questions about the big commercial risks drug companies must take and the enormous pricing power of medicines that can help suffering patients.

The state of Iowa has started paying $1,000 per pill for a new drug targeting hepatitis C, but officials don’t plan to buy the medication for every person who carries the virus and qualifies for public health care.

Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) is close to a pact with generic drugmakers to bring low-cost versions of its $84,000 hepatitis C drug Sovaldi to about 80 developing countries including India,Indonesia, and Pakistan.