A new drug for the liver disease hepatitis C is scaring people. Not because the drug is dangerous — it’s generally heralded as a genuine medical breakthrough — but because it costs $1,000 a pill and about $84,000 for a typical person’s total treatment.
“The fundamental concern is Sovaldi and other speciality drugs are going to put an unsustainable burden on the health insurance system,” said John Rother, CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care, which lobbies for health-system reform. In a poll it conducted this month of 2,000 people, nearly 60 percent said they were concerned about […]
Gilead Sciences’ new hepatitis C drug receives as much praise for its healing powers as it receives criticism of its price, $84,000 for 12 weeks. Those parallel storylines played out even further in a prominent scientific journal’s latest edition, published online over the weekend.
Gilead Sciences’ controversial $1,000-a-day Sovaldi pill is priced in line with previous treatments for Hepatitis C, but the nation’s health-care system likely won’t be able to handle that kind of sticker shock, and competition probably will bring down that price tag in coming months and years.
There is one other way that Kalydeco is an excellent example of personalized medicine: its cost. It’s more than $300,000 a year. Because patients will likely be taking the drug for the rest of their lives, it could cost millions of dollars to keep just one patient on Kalydeco. That raises another important question about […]
1. It’s all about price — even when it’s not: Even before Foster City-based Gilead Sciences Inc., led by CEO John Martin, launched its hepatitis C drug Sovaldi for $1,000 a pill, critics pounced.
Will the cost of new hepatitis C treatments bust state budgets? A new analysis suggests many states may, in fact, be overwhelmed as they attempt to pay for the Solvaldi medication sold by Gilead Sciences GILD -0.41%, which costs $84,000 for each patient, and several forthcoming treatments that may be priced at a similar level.
In the good-news/bad-news world of blockbuster drugs, the latest is the launch of Sovaldi, a drug to treat hepatitis C. Sovaldi comes with a cure rate as high as 90% for a disease that afflicts 3 million people in the United States, and with fewer complications than previous treatments. But it also comes with a […]
“As longtime health-care advocate John Rother sees it, the Sovaldi issue is a turning point for the health-care system, making it confront the biggest questions: how we pay for drugs, how public health prioritizes treatments, how insurance is designed to make these drugs affordable for patients, and, ultimately, our societal obligation to ensure access to […]
Eighty-two percent in a new poll say the cost of a $1,000-a-pill medicine which has sparked congressional scrutiny is “unacceptable” and expressed concerns the specialty drug could harm innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.