Senators slam Gilead’s pricing of hepatitis C drug Sovaldi

Two U.S. senators – one Republican, one Democrat – said in a report Tuesday that Gilead Sciences had priced its groundbreaking hepatitis C medicines to maximize profit and “broad, affordable access was not a key consideration” in setting prices.

Sovaldi, the first drug that cures some forms of hepatitis C, was priced at $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 for a once-a-day, 12-week course of treatment.

To view the full article, register now. “Even with that expenditure, less than 2.4 percent of the roughly 700,000 Medicaid enrollees with Hepatitis C were treated with Sovaldi”, the report reads.

Hepatitis C is a viral infection that affects some 3 million people in the USA and claims more lives here than AIDS.

She was reacting to news that Turing Pharmaceutical raised the price on Daraprim, a long-existing treatment for toxoplasmosis, from 13.50 per pill to 750 after Turing acquired the rights to the drug. At least 27 state Medicaid programs restricted Sovaldi’s use for only the sickest patients.

“Gilead pursued a calculated scheme for pricing and marketing its Hepatitis C drug based on one primary goal, maximizing revenue, regardless of the human consequences”, Oregon Sen.

In a statement, Gilead expressed disagreement with the report’s conclusions, saying prices are less today than the cost of previous regimens due to discounts and rebates. Their criticism of the price led Gilead and almost every other biotech stock into a brief nose-dive, though the group recovered until presidential candidate Hillary Clinton raised the drug-pricing issue more broadly this September. Both senators are senior members of the Finance Committee, which oversees government health care programs.

“Given the current cost of the newer treatment options and to remain fiscally responsible we will be forced to make hard decisions regarding who does and does not get access to treatment medications upon diagnosis, ” Samantha McKinley, pharmacy director of the Kentucky Department for Medicaid Services, wrote in a letter to Grassley and Wyden. Although innovative medications are expensive, they can reduce future medical costs by helping patients avoid hospitalization and surgeries.

“If Gilead’s approach is the future of how blockbuster drugs are launched in America, it’s going to cost billions and billions of dollars to treat just a fraction of the health care patients in America”.

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. That could be coupled with research on the benefits of the newest drugs, to get a better idea of their real value.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), finance committee chairman and coauthor of the report, said he hoped greater price transparency would lower costs and improve access.