If AbbVie Discounts its Hep C Drug, Would Pricing Reach a Tipping Point?

If AbbVie Discounts its Hep C Drug, Would Pricing Reach a Tipping Point?
By ED SILVERMAN

For instance, in an investor note, Sanford Bernstein analyst Geoff Porges wrote that Gilead left AbbVie “less room to start a price war” than some may have expected. How so? Gilead priced the eight-week regimen at $63,000, which means average pricing for Harvoni would be about $80,000, assuming that as many as 45% of the patients with most common form of the virus use the drug for eight weeks.

This is actually less than what most insurers are now paying for Sovaldi, which costs $84,000 for a 12-week regimen, but must be taken with another drug. This pushes the cost to somewhere between $95,000 or so and $160,000, depending upon which medication is added. In short, the Gilead maneuver may place added pressure on AbbVie to consider aggressive pricing.

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