The Future, page-67

Yes, we should do very well, and I'm very happy with my holding, and I'm quite confident that the drug will perform to expectations, and certainly the 50k or so PA Total Knee Replacement procedures that are carried out each year in Australia are a considerable financial burden to the Medicare budget, and the private health funds (>$1b + p.a.). Totally agree with all of that....

But PPS isn't an alternative to TKR, as some here seem to assume, although it may, in the long term, reduce the incidence, and the financial burden, of OA related TKR and THP health care. Bear in mind here that you don't generally get TKR surgery unless your knee is totally shot, and your bones are basically rubbing against each other: PPS isn't going to fix that. Also, most of these procedures are carried out on elderly people >70 with a long history of obesity; this demographic hasn't been trialed, and these are definitely not the otherwise super fit young athletes that are getting early access to the drug under various special arrangements, so we don't know how effective PPR is going to be on people in this demographic, if at all.

So yes, there's probably going to be an opportunity for the government, and the private health funds, to spend money up front, in order to make a potentially significant saving in the future, but, unfortunately, as we know, governments everywhere are very bad at doing commonsense things like this.

As an opioid substitute however, particularly in the USA, I think the potential is very considerable indeed. It's probably no coincidence that West Virginia is both the state with the highest level of opioid-related deaths relative to population, and also the state with the highest incidence of doctor diagnosed arthritis.

As to pricing, as I've said, $2k per treatment is just not going to happen, outside the wealthy and the desperate; in my view, $300 is a more realistic number on which to base estimates of PAR's future revenue, and profitability. Still very nice margins, but not necessarily a gigantic gold mine.