The cost to cure Hepatitis C

[LibraryLady]

What is it worth to cure a disease?

Gilead Sciences has an answer: a thousand dollars a pill.

Gilead’s drug Sovaldi, combined with other drugs in pill form, has cured more than 15,000 cases of hepatitis C. In a 12-week regimen, it has a success rate of more than 80 percent. The total cost of this regimen — largely because of the $84,000 price of Sovaldi — comes to $117,000, according to estimates by two scientists with CVS Caremark Corp.

Hepatitis C is a long-lingering virus that attacks the liver. It can cause cirrhosis and death. It is the leading cause of liver cancer.

About 3.2 million Americans are thought to be infected with the disease, but most show no symptoms. Once the disease becomes apparent, treatments involving injections of interferon and oral medications can last for many months. Their cost isn’t that much different from the regimen using Sovaldi, and some patients receive expensive ($600,000) liver transplants.

John Milligan, Gilead Sciences Inc.’s president and chief operating officer, told financial analysts this month that Sovaldi is different from other drugs coming onto the market.

“It’s an outlier because we are curing people of a horrible disease in a very rapid time frame, and that’s a very unusual thing for payers to think about,” he said.

Steve Miller, chief medical officer of the St. Louis-based pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, says the price means contemplating financial disaster.

“There is no doubt that Sovaldi is a breakthrough therapy, but unfortunately, it is also likely to break state budgets,” he said.

Two weeks ago, Express Scripts put out a state-by-state analysis of Solvaldi’s impact on Medicaid and state prison budgets. The study found that Texas faces an additional $5.3 billion in costs, or $200 for every taxpayer in the state.

“Since health care for so many hepatitis C patients is funded by state programs, each citizen will be shouldering the unprecedented cost burden,” Miller said. “The unsustainable pricing of this medication has essentially become a tax on all Americans.”

The Express Scripts study includes a 23 percent discount that Medicaid receives for drug purchases, lowering Sovaldi’s cost per pill to $770.

In December, a University of Liverpool paper published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that the cost to manufacture Sovaldi was between $68 and $136 for a 12-week regimen — between 95 cents and $1.89 per pill.

Gilead, based in Foster City, Calif., didn’t discover its breakthrough drug in the lab. It paid $11 billion in 2011 for Pharmasset, another drug company, which did the research leading to Sovaldi.

Analysts at the time thought Gilead paid too much for Pharmasset. But since Sovaldi’s introduction this year, its sales have exceeded $5.7 billion. The company reported second-quarter profit of $3.66 billion.

The public policy problem all of this heralds isn’t just about Sovaldi. Other drugs based on targeting genetics or with limited benefits are coming into production and may cost far more than Gilead’s cure for hepatitis C.

Insurers are hoping the medical community will come up with cost/benefit analyses that will help them argue for prioritizing treatments. Already, some have limited Sovaldi to the sickest hepatitis C patients.

Follow Jim Landers on Twitter at @landersjim.

[LibraryLady]

[Bob Of Burleson]

From the story:

In December, a University of Liverpool paper published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that the cost to manufacture Sovaldi was between $68 and $136 for a 12-week regimen — between 95 cents and $1.89 per pill.

[BigTex]

Then don't take it.

[Red Oak]

What did it cost to develop the drug ?

Maybe Bill & Melissa should cut a check to cover the development costs ?

[Bob Of Burleson]

Melinda.

[GFB]

..either one.