Express Scripts offers low-priced alternative to Turing drug

The drug can be ordered to be delivered by mail and the pharmacy will submit the claim to Express Scripts, the company said.

Just before Thanksgiving, Turing Pharmaceuticals’ Martin Shkreli announced that he would continue the price hike on Daraprim – a crucial treatment for people living with HIV, pregnant women, and others with weakened immune systems. But with Express Scripts’ backing-and the outcry over Daraprim’s enormous price increase-the compounded version could gain traction.

As reported by USA Today, Turing Pharmaceuticals has not responded to Express Scripts’ plan to cover the Daraprim alternative. The cost of some newer medications has raised questions as well, and drug prices consistently rank among the top public concerns, according to opinion polls.

Express Scripts said it would work with such organizations as the Infectious Disease Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association to inform providers about the value of the formulation.

Multimillionaire hedge fund manager and biotech guru Martin Shkreli has been getting a lot of negative press lately, most of it well-deserved, as his firm Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to an cheap older drug and jacked up the price up several thousand percent. Valeant Pharmaceuticals VRX came under the spotlight for a massive price hike of two of its drugs – Isuprel and Nitropres.

It’s a bit ironic for Express Scripts to support compounding pharmacies and this particular FDA loophole.

Turing is offering “patient assistance programs” to low-income people that can limit their costs to $10 copayments, she said.

Physicians will be able to send a patient-specific prescription for the combination formulation of pyrimethamine and leucovorin to Imprimis, which is now a part of the Express Scripts pharmacy network.

Express Scripts, a major manager of prescription drugs, will offer patients the low-priced Imprimis drug, instead of Daraprim, starting as soon as this week, reports CNN. The company that tried to reap off some of the sickest patient groups in the country by unjustifiably hiking price of a decades-old drug is essentially being pushed out of the drug’s market – and it all started with a single tweet.

“We believe we now have a safe, high-quality and extremely cost-effective way to provide access to a Daraprim alternative”, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steve Miller said in a statement from the company. She said the company has recently “announced significant price reductions for hospitals”.

Compounding pharmacies typically create tailor-made versions of medicines for patients that can’t take a drug as formulated.

Last year, the St. Louis company threw its weight into the debate over those hepatitis C drugs by choosing AbbVie Inc.’s Viekira Pak as its preferred treatment for patients with the most common form of the condition over alternatives like Sovaldi.