Hepatitis C might have met its match as the first complete treatment for the disease with only the taken of one pill a day as it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday.
The drug is called Harvoni. It comes from Gilead Sciences, which has made other drugs to help shorten the duration of treatment and provide the first all-oral regimen for many patients, according to elpasoinc.com.
This drug does come at a cost. Gilead put out the drug Sovaldi, which cost $1,000 a pill and $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment, according to the report. Harvoni will cost $1,125 a pill, $94,500 for a 12-week course of treatment. It comes out to be around the same price as Sovaldi, because with Sovaldi, you would take the drug with other drugs. In the case of Harvoni, you can take it for eight weeks and save $31,500.
It's going to be tough for some insurance companies to cover cost for Harvoni, as Sovaldi was restricted only to the most patients in ill of hepatitis C.This
"They are not prepared to cover the cost even at $63,000," Dr. Steven Miller, the chief medical officer of Express Scripts, which manages pharmacy benefits for employers and insurance companies, told the website. "Their budgets just are not going to be able to tolerate it."
He said the patients eligible for the shorter regimen are also the ones least in need of treatment. But some patient advocates hope the pricing will persuade payers to relax their restrictions, according to the report.
"We're talking about a much lower cost to Medicaid for a substantial number of people, and to me that's a game changer," said Ryan Clary, executive director of the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, a coalition of organizations that receives some funding from drug companies.
Gilead defended the price. "We believe the price of Harvoni reflects the value of the medicine," it said in a statement.
"Unlike long-term or indefinite treatments for other chronic diseases, Harvoni offers a cure at a price that will significantly reduce hepatitis C treatment costs now and deliver significant health care savings to the health care system over the long term."
The drug itself combines an ingredient in Sovaldi known as sofosbuvir with another new medicine called ledipasvir, which is not available as a stand-alone product.