EDITORIAL: Patients pay steep price for Hepatitis C cure
By Chicago Tribune | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
The drug, Sovaldi, could save the lives of many of the estimated 80,000 people a year who die from the blood-borne liver disease. Eventually, Sovaldi could save the nation's health system billions of dollars by preventing liver failure and liver cancer, not to mention curbing the huge costs of liver transplants.
That's the staggeringly good news.
Now for the not-so-good: The miracle pill costs
Those treatments could add
That's why some states are planning or starting to restrict access to the drug to mainly the sickest patients. Some private insurers also are imposing treatment limits, urging physicians to treat only patients who absolutely need the therapy now, Brennan and Shrank report. Not
But there's also mounting pressure on
Wyden and Grassley said in a statement that Sovaldi's pricing raises "serious questions about the extent to which the market for this drug is operating efficiently and rationally."
But if
No, we do not defend price gouging by prescription drug companies. But we strongly defend American pharmaceutical innovation and the wondrous results it yields. Sovaldi is a prime example of why America's drug industry is the world's powerhouse. A company spends years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing a drug, knowing most fail in trial. The company discovers a blockbuster drug. Company execs price it accordingly, to reward shareholders and investors for the risks taken and for all the money spent chasing miracle drugs that never panned out.
State and federal officials may be forced to limit the drug to the sickest patients: The costs of a single drug, no matter how effective, can't demolish already-strapped
Gilead also has a choice. It can stick to its pricing or it can drop the price and widen its market, introducing the drug to more people immediately.
Company execs make that choice knowing that half a dozen major competing medications are in development and expected to come to market, some as soon as the end of this year, Brennan tells us. That price competition will likely drive down costs ... and crimp Gilead's bottom line.
There's that market again.
High risk. High reward. Sovaldi is a triumph.
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