Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Interview: Express Scripts Talks About AbbVie Hepatitis C Drug Deal

‘The Big Issue Has Not Been Choice, But Access:’ Express Scripts’ Miller Explains
By ED SILVERMAN

Last month, Express Scripts , the nation’s biggest pharmacy benefits manager, and AbbVie reached an exclusive deal that ushered in a price war for hepatitis C treatments. The drug maker offered an undisclosed discount in hopes of breaking the lock that Gilead Sciences has on the burgeoning market. The PBM, which has railed against Gilead pricing, agreed to offer the AbbVie treatment to patients with the most common form of the virus, a population that constitutes some 70% of those infected in the U.S. The AbbVie regimen, however, can be more cumbersome and some physicians worry about patient compliance. We spoke with Steve Miller, the chief medical officer at Express Scripts, about the move. This is an excerpt..

Continue reading here @ WSJ

Related:

Gilead exclusive provider of hepatitis C medicine for CVS
By Robert Langreth and Caroline Chen
BLOOMBERG NEWS JANUARY 05, 2015

Gilead’s Harvoni and Sovaldi will be the exclusive drugs for CVS’s standard commercial list of covered medicine, as well as its list for health-care exchanges, Medicare Part D and Medicaid, the benefits manager said today in an e-mail.

“Our goal was to create the lowest net-cost solution for the entire population of patients with all genotypes of hepatitis C,” CVS said. The company didn’t say whether it negotiated a special price for Gilead’s drugs.


Read more @ Bloomberg....

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