HCV Reading: Pharmaceutical companies name their price tag for drugs and that’s that.

HCV Reading: Pharmaceutical companies name their price tag for drugs and that’s that.

In case you missed it, an editorial was published over at Forbes yesterday about the high rise in specialty drug spending with a proposed new pricing model, written by Bernard J. Tyson, chief executive at Kaiser.

According to the article by 2020 drug spending could reach $400 billion, up from $87 billion in 2012, citing the cost of new HCV drugs as one example. Sadly, the high price tag left far too many patients out in the cold, with payers rationing out the new drugs to only the sickest patients, Tyson writes;

Last year, new life-changing treatments for hepatitis C became available. These treatments are truly remarkable, and very, very expensive. The prices were so high that some professional organizations recommended treatment only for the very sickest patients, an unthinkable step for many in the industry.

Why Pharma Must Change Its Model

Matthew Herper

Forbes Staff

GUEST POST WRITTEN BY

Bernard J. Tyson
Chairman and chief executive of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Hospitals

So what does a new pricing model look like? 

In an integrated system like Kaiser Permanente we see the entire health care dollar, so we can assess the outcomes of new drugs and related costs over time. To help us further assess the value of these drugs we have put in place a system to track the efficacy and real world impact of treatments. I expect to use that data, which is non-patient specific, as part of the conversation with my peers in the pharmaceutical industry....

Continue reading.... 

Of Interest
Addressing the Restricted Use of DAA therapies
Posted on July 6, 2015
Results of a new US cost effectiveness study indicate that effective direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapies should be not be restricted to only those HCV-infected patients with advanced fibrosis. Authors note that as a society, we have an opportunity to eliminate hepatitis C by taking appropriate and timely steps, and we should be willing to pay for the current HCV therapies by providing additional resources and giving hepatitis C the attention it deserves.

July Updates
Reducing the cost of new hepatitis C drugs
An index of articles pointing the reader to the current controversy over the high price of Sovaldi, Harvoni (ledipasvir/sofosbuvir) and AbbVie Viekira Pak