Monday, September 19, 2016

Covering the Cost of the Cure - From Hepatitis C to Cancer, New Therapies Are Straining a System Plagued by Inefficiency

Covering the Cost of the Cure
From Hepatitis C to Cancer, New Therapies Are Straining a System Plagued by Inefficiency
Peter Sonnenreich
Linda Geisler P T. 2016;41(9): 565-566, 589

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As researchers devise ever-more-costly therapies for diseases, managed care experts warn that the struggle to pay the bills could threaten the sustainability of the nation’s inefficient health care system.
Sofosbuvir (Sovaldi, Gilead Sciences) is often cited as an example of the conflict that can arise between cures and costs.

Before sofosbuvir, the focus was on value, explains Newell E. McElwee, PharmD, MSPH, an Associate Vice President in the Center for Observational and Real-World Evidence at Merck. “Sovaldi was an ‘aha’ moment for many of us in the pharmaceutical industry that we could have a drug that by all of the traditional ways of assessing value showed both clinical and economic value, and it would still not be used in all the patients that it could be used in because of budget impact and affordability issues.”

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