By Atia Musazay May 14, 2014 A breakthrough drug now on the market could be a potential cure for hepatitis C. But with its costly price tag of $1,000, or $84,000 for a 12-week treatment, the state of Washington is concerned that not everyone who needs the medication will be able to afford it. […]
By Robert Langreth May 7, 2014 The backlash over surging drug prices is starting to take hold. With the average cost of branded cancer drugs doubling over the past decade to about $10,000 per month in the U.S., doctors, insurers and politicians are all moving in different ways to pressure drugmakers on pricing. Cancer doctors are […]
By Andy Miller May 6, 2014 Probably the biggest ethical dilemma now confronting the health care world involves two expensive new drugs to treat hepatitis C. The issue boils down to a tradeoff between efficacy and cost. One drug, Sovaldi, has a 90 percent cure rate for newly infected patients – much better than […]
By Bruce Jaspen April 28, 2014 Medicaid health insurance programs for the poor are grappling with how to pay for the costly Hepatitis C treatment Sovaldi, which costs $1,000 a pill and is running up a huge tab for states already grappling with myriad health and general budgetary issues. The costs are hitting Medicaid […]
By Jason Millman April 28, 2014 The new hepatitis C drug Sovaldi is being hailed as a potential breakthrough treatment for a disease that affects about 3.2 million Americans. It’s also vexing insurers, who worry about the drug’s $1,000-a-day-price tag. (The full 12-week course of treatment runs about $84,000). One set of insurers is […]
BY JAMES SUROWIECKI April 28 Issue Few people have done better in the recent stock boom than biotech investors. Biotech was the best-performing market sector last year, and in the past two years its stocks rose a hundred and twenty per cent. But suddenly, in late March, the stocks tanked, some falling more than twenty […]
JUDY WOODRUFF April 23, 2014 Watch Story Here JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: Who should pay when drugs are very effective, but extremely expensive? That’s an important question for the U.S. health care system as new treatments come along, and it’s a matter of real concern over a new drug that has a 90 percent to 100 […]
By Jay Hancock April 18, 2014 UnitedHealth Group spent $100 million on hepatitis C drugs in the first three months of the year, much more than expected, the company said Thursday. The news helped drive down the biggest insurance company’s stock and underscores the challenge for all health care payers in covering Sovaldi, an […]
April 18, 2014 Illinois prison inmates will now be able to get a new and effective — but incredibly costly — drug for hepatitis C. The Herald-Review reported on Friday that the state Department of Corrections has approved the use of Sovaldi for hepatitis C. The medication has a cure rate of 95 percent. […]
By Caroline Humer April 17, 2014 UnitedHealth Group Inc, the largest U.S. health insurer, said it spent more than $100 million to cover a pricey new hepatitis C drug from Gilead Sciences Inc in its first three months on the market, an amount that was “multiple” times what it had expected. UnitedHealth is the […]