Tag Archive for: drug costs

Recent headlines are sounding alarm bells over the highest jump in healthcare costs in a decade. The impact has the potential to cause disruptions across key market access channels: employers, health plans, and pharmacy benefit managers.

While gene therapies for treating sickle cell disease are promising, they will only be cost effective in the U.S. if priced below $2 million, according to a new modeling analysis.

The survey of 502 employers by Accolade, a company that provides healthcare programs for employers, and research firm Savanta said 43% of the employers it polled could cover GLP-1 drugs in 2024 compared to 25% that cover them now.

Blue Shield, whose health plans cover 4.8 million members, said it will now work with five different companies, including Mark Cuban’s drug company, to provide “convenient, transparent access to medications while lowering costs.”

Nine U.S. states are objecting to a proposed $13.5 million settlement between Eli Lilly and a class of insulin buyers over claims that it inflated the drug’s price, saying the drugmaker is wrongly trying to use the deal to shield itself from future lawsuits by states.

Following its initial lawsuit last month, Merck has now requested that a federal judge rule on its Inflation Reduction Act case against the Biden administration without a trial.

Only about one-third of patients prescribed a popular weight-loss drug like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy were still taking it a year later, while total healthcare costs for the group rose sharply, according to an analysis of U.S. pharmacy claims shared with Reuters.

The Novartis-owned company said its drug, Hyrimoz, will be priced at a 5% discount off Humira’s current list price of $6,922 per month, but that it was also offering an unbranded version of Humira at an 81% discount.

Can recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) accelerate the development of personalized medicine?

“It is not negotiation at all. It is price setting,” Chief Executive Albert Bourla said at a Reuters newsmaker event on Thursday, referring to the Biden Administration’s signature drug pricing reform, part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).