The decision by Express Scripts to make the AbbVie hepatitis C treatment the exclusive option for patients with the most common type of the virus caused a ruckus on Wall Street, although the reaction among some doctors and patient advocates was mixed. Read More
The federal lawsuit from Philadelphia's public transit agency appears to be the first directly challenging the price of Sovaldi, which costs $84,000 overall during a normal 12-week course of treatment in the United States. Read More
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, or Septa, has a workforce of around 9,000, with many more covered in a health plan for retirees, and says it has spent $2.4 million on Sovaldi through the first 11 months of the year. Read More
Lately, there has been a lot of of interest over a new drug to cure Hepatitis C—a disease that’s surpassed AIDS in number of death since 2007. Sovaldi, a medication produced by American pharmaceutical company Gilead, has a 90% success rate in treating the disease compared to a 50% success rate of the other existing treatments. Read More
Healthcare spending represents the single-largest share of the U.S. federal budget in fiscal year 2014—coming in at a whopping trillion dollars. Read More
The first thing Philip Mason noticed was the hair loss. The 73-year-old retiree, a former computer programmer, began shedding hair from his arms, legs, everywhere on his body. “It just all came right off,” he said. After the hair loss came weight loss; Mason dropped from 150 to 125 pounds. He felt weak and sick. Mason, who is blind and already used a white cane to get around, began having falls. He switched to a walker for more stability. Read More
People with health coverage – including those who buy it through government insurance exchanges and Medicare beneficiaries – are likely to pay more out-of-pocket next year for so-called “specialty drugs,” which treat complex conditions, according to two studies from consulting firm Avalere Health. Read More
It appears that spending on prescription medicines will continue to defy the laws of gravity, according to a new report from IMS Health Institute for Informatics. Read More
After several years of modest increases, American spending on medications is projected to shoot up by 12 percent this year, pushing the nation’s drug bill to between $375 billion and $385 billion, according to a report by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. Read More
The cost to develop a new drug and win FDA marketing approval is now pegged at nearly $2.6 billion, according to a new report from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Read More
The revelation of hidden data bolstered a growing movement against what’s referred to within the research community as “publication bias,” in which scientists squirrel away mostly negative or inconclusive findings and broadcast only their positive ones. Read More
The National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD) issued a letter to Congress last month that included a variety of interesting proposals but also raised the specter of direct or indirect price controls for the very high-priced Hepatitis drugs that are devastating state Medicaid budgets. Read More