At the end of the day, that's what the calculus comes down to. Many of these gene therapies are for rare diseases, but creating them is still extremely expensive. At some point, the cost of dedicating those societal resources to saving those lives is too high.

That's a hard thing to admit, so people look for a way around it. But at the end of the day somebody has to pay. If you tell the drug companies that the products are too expensive, and ask them to accept lower returns than comparable high-tech, high-risk, talent and capital-intensive industries, you're asking those companies and their shareholders to pay. (Or you're asking them to cross-subsidize those treatments with money from treatments that have a much larger number of patients.) People love that idea because it makes it seem like you're getting cheaper treatments for "free" but all you're doing is hiding the costs. There is a cost, it's now just hidden and unaccounted for. If you told Apple they could only charge $250 for an iPhone, what do you think would happen?

Let the drug companies charge what they want to charge, and let government-funded healthcare programs decide what they're willing to pay to save a particular life. That's the most transparent and ethical thing to do.