LONDON, Jan 17 (APM) - The U.S. government could cure most Americans with hepatitis C infections if it simply bought Gilead Sciences outright rather than purchasing its products in the drug market, according to two experts on Tuesday.

Gilead has been criticised over the high price of its hepatitis C drugs, Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) and Harvoni (ledipasvir+sofosbuvir) , which currently cost more than $500 per pill but cure the underlying hepatitis C liver infection.

But, counterintuitively, buying Gilead outright on the open market could lower hepatitis C drug costs per patient to a third of their current level, according to Peter Bach and Mark Trusheim, guest authors who wrote the piece for Forbes which was published on Tuesday. Bach is a physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre and Trusheim is strategic director at MIT Centre for Biomedical Innovation.

That would make it affordable to rapidly treat the 2.7 million Americans the CDC estimates still have hepatitis C, the two experts said in Forbes online.

"Our proposal steers wide of the government negotiating drug prices; it would pay a fair premium over a price the stock market has independently set for the company. The government won't be picking winners and losers - in hepatitis C the clinical market has spoken and Gilead has won greater than 80% market share. There are no price controls, nor is the government "marching in" on Gilead's patents that draw on NIH-funded research. Rather, we suggest borrowing private equity power tools for an important public health job," they said.

Ideology matters less when the numbers work, they added. "In this unique case they do because there is an intersection of a clear winning therapy, large public health need, slow adoption, high product pricing and attractive break-up valuations of the Gilead components compared to its conglomerate stock market valuation."

Clinical studies suggest that treatment arrests and sometimes reverses the liver damage the virus causes and will lower the rate of new infections, pegged currently at 17,000 a year. Progress so far has been slow. They estimate about 600,000 Americans have received treatment, even though drugs have been available since the end of 2013 which essentially cure the infection for most people.

"This snail's-pace adoption reflects the problems the treatment's high cost causes our system. Gilead's Harvoni and its related portfolio of hepatitis C treatments after rebates and discounts cost around $42,000 for an average course of treatment. At that price treating all those still infected would cost taxpayers, patients, insurers and employers about $113 billion. In 2015, total spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. was $328 billion.

"Buying the company rather than purchasing its products just works out to be a far cheaper route," they argue. "Gilead's market value is around $100 billion. Paying the shareholders a 30% acquisition premium and assuming the company's $26 billion of debt would cost the U.S. government $156 billion. But like any savvy strategic buyer, the government would then divest unneeded assets," they emphasise.

They say Gilead has a "strong HIV franchise" that analysts value at $52 billion and a research pipeline worth an estimated $10 billion (and potentially significantly more). They estimate the ex-U.S. hepatitis C business is worth $17 billion.

"A private company could pick it up, or other countries could follow our lead and buy it. That brings the deal price down to $77 billion."

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