Who will end up paying the price for Biogens new Alzheimers drug?
The big news in the health care world these days is not just the pandemic; a new drug with a hefty price tag is also causing controversy. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new treatment for Alzheimers disease, the first in nearly 20 years. Although many are excited by the development, some scientists have objected to the rapid approval of the Biogen drug, Aduhelm, and many health care advocates are vehemently objecting to the price  estimated at $56,000 for one year of treatment. Rachel Sachs, who teaches health care law at Washington University in St. Louis, explained that because most Alzheimers patients are Medicare beneficiaries, were mostly talking about costs that are going to be borne by Medicare and by seniors themselves.  Which ends up being all taxpayers, really. Juliette Cubanski with the Kaiser Family Foundation said she and her colleagues crunched the numbers on just what those costs might be. We think the spending for this drug in one year alone would be nearly $29 billion, Cubanski said, which is just a really astronomical sum of money for one service covered by Medicare.  Groups like the Alzheimers Association say that while drug pricing is complex, this price is unacceptable. The Alzheimers Association is calling on Biogen to lower the price, though the groups chief strategy officer Dr. Joanne Pike acknowledged the cost of treatment for Alzheimers. We know we need treatments. Alzheimers is an expensive disease overall, its the most expensive disease. Its projected to cost this nation $355 billion in 2021, Pike said. On a conference call with investors last week, Biogens head of global product strategy and commercialization, Chirfi Guindo, used those costs as part of the justification for the price. We consider this to be a really responsible price. And we consider this to be a price that is sustainable for the system, Guindo said. Health insurance companies and the federal government will have to decide if thats true.