The makers of a breakthrough drug for hepatitis C put profits before patients in pricing the $1,000 pill that cures the liver-wasting disease, Senate investigators said Tuesday.
A bipartisan report from the Senate Finance Committee concluded that California-based Gilead Sciences was focused on maximizing revenue even as the company’s own analysis showed a lower price would allow more patients to be treated. There was no immediate response from Gilead.
The company’s first breakthrough pill was called Sovaldi; priced at $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 for a full course of treatment. Gilead has since introduced a more expensive next-generation pill called Harvoni, which is highly effective and simpler for patients to take. That one is priced at $94,500 for a course of treatment.
Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said their 18-month investigation found that the high price tag significantly limited patient access and heaped huge costs on federal and state health care programs. At least 27 state Medicaid programs restricted Sovaldi’s use for only the sickest patients.
Although professional medical societies recommend the Gilead drugs as first-line treatments for anyone with hepatitis C infection, the Senate report found that the high cost resulted in less than 3 percent of the potentially eligible Medicaid beneficiaries getting treatment in 2014. Medicaid is the federal-state health program for low-income people.
Hepatitis C is a viral infection that affects some 3 million people in the U.S. and claims more lives here than AIDS. More than three out of four infected adults are baby boomers, the age group now entering Medicare. The government estimates that program will spend more than $9 billion this year on drugs for hepatitis C.
Patients say the disease feels like a bad flu that never goes away. While the disease advances gradually, it can ultimately destroy the liver, requiring a transplant to save the patient’s life. The virus is primarily spread by contact with infected blood.
The price of drugs is the public’s top health care concern in opinion polls, and the 2016 presidential candidates are increasingly paying attention. Wyden and Grassley said it’s an issue the Senate must grapple with.
The pharmaceutical industry says the high price of new drugs reflects the cost of research and development. Gilead, in earlier efforts to explain its pricing for Sovaldi, said it compared favorably on a “cost per cure” basis with older drugs that were much less effective.
The cost pressure from hepatitis drugs on private insurers and government programs is expected to ease as competitor drugs gain a footing in the market. However, Grassley and Wyden said the same sort of cost crisis is likely to arise with other new medications.
(AP)
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4 Responses
Like duh. That is how the US finance drug research. The companies makes lots of money by inventing new drugs and charging for them. Those who don’t want to wait until the patent expires, pay. The alternative would be to reduce the drug company profits, thereby causing them to focus on producing low cost drugs without doing expensive research. Those who want to use only low cost drugs are fee to do so, only they will be using 20 year drugs since it is only the newly invented ones that are expensive.
Let’s face it. Most of these Hep C patients are Medicaid and they got the disease from IV drug use. So it’s basically our tax dollars going into a CEO’s bank account to help the druggies.
The other interesting thing is that usually, the medical societies are falling all over themselves to push the cheapest possible generic drugs, saying that the more advanced drugs have no advantage, etc. But here, in this politically correct case of taxing working Americans to take care of druggies, they’ve somehow decided that the most expensive drug is what we need to buy for them.
What’s unclear to me about this bipartisan report is what impact it’s supposed to have other than to possibly embarrass the company to reduce the price of the drug. Does the report provide some legal means for the legislature to force the issue? Even if it does, how is the “right” price determined?
Reb Yid, (#2.), you unfortunately don’t know what you are talking about. Hep C was contracted mostly by innocent patients who received blood-transfusions in the 70’s. Long before the virus was known about or screened for.
Their virus, unlike HIV-AIDS, was NOT brought about by immoral lifestyles, or intravenous drug use. It was contracted by doctor ordered transfusions.
Chachomim, hiz’haru b’divreichem.