New Drugs for Cancer, Rare Disease Can Now Cost More Than $20,000 a Month
A new Amgen Inc. lung-cancer treatment, Lumakras, carried a hefty price tag when it came out in 2021: $17,900 per patient monthly. Just over a year later, in December 2022, a second drug for the same type of cancer, Krazati from Mirati Therapeutics Inc., had an even higher price: $19,750 a month—a 10% premium.
(snip)
The median starting price—meaning half were higher and half were lower—for a newly approved drug nearly tripled to $7,034 per patient monthly in 2022, from $2,624 in 2011, according to an analysis conducted for The Wall Street Journal by 46brooklyn Research, an Ohio-based nonprofit that analyzes drug price data. Drugmakers say the prices reflect the clinical benefits the new drugs provide for patients. The companies say most people don’t pay list prices because they offer rebates and discounts to employers, pharmacy-benefit managers and insurers. And companies often provide assistance to help defray out-of-pocket costs for patients.
(snip)
Some new drugs that are intended to be one-time treatments now carry starting prices in the millions of dollars per patient. CSL Ltd’s Hemgenix, a gene therapy for the blood disorder hemophilia B, made its debut with a list price of $3.5 million after it was approved by U.S. regulators in November. CSL said the pricing reflects the treatment’s benefit to patients, potentially sparing them from repeat dosing of an older, costly drug.
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 aims to curb drug costs by requiring drugmakers to pay rebates to the federal Medicare program if certain drug price hikes exceed the general inflation rate, and by giving the Medicare agency the authority to negotiate prices for certain drugs several years after they are introduced. But the new law doesn’t directly stop drugmakers from charging a high price for a brand new drug at launch, and drug-price watchdogs say there are few checks on how high the price can go. The new law could contribute to higher launch prices if companies see that as a way to offset limits on their ability to raise prices for a new drug after it is launched.
(snip)
Among the other factors fueling high launch prices is the drug industry’s increased focus on developing new medicines for diseases with small patient populations, like genetic disorders and certain cancers, drug-price researchers say.
More..
https://archive.is/GYoEK
= new reply since forum marked as read
