Why Novartis Is Like Your Cute Little, Bank-Breaking, Liberal Arts College
Novartis appears to be taking a cue from Sarah Lawrence and every other college or university in the nation, which uniformly charge exorbitant tuitions and then provide almost everybody some kind of financial break.
That is to say: Novartis is tempering its boing-inducing sticker price of Gilenya, the first disease-modifying pill for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, by offering monthly copays, writes Bloomberg. Consequently the $4000-a-month (that's wholesale) drug, which launched this week, will cost as little as (as little as!) $3200 for some non-Medicare patients. That's because Novartis will provide as much as $800 in monthly copayments to Gilenya users. It's also reported that the company will "help patients navigate testing and monitoring recommended by US regulators," by paying as much as $600 for these expenses (for background on these expenses, go here).
In the age of the dying blockbuster, Gilenya is nevertheless expected to be one (if not on the basis of sale volume). A Bloomberg-cited analyst predicts that the drug will fetch $3 billion annually, which easily exceeds Avonex's revenue for last year ($2.3 billion). Members of at least one very large health insurer will have immediate access to the drug, in top-tier fashion. The highest monthly out-of-pocket cost for Gilenya in this case would total $250.
Bloomberg also cites a nifty, online drug-purchasing resource, destinationrx.com. According to this website, monthly costs for the injectable disease-modifying drugs for MS are the following*:
- Avonex, $2941.92
- Betaseron, $6196.61
- Rebif, $2809.91
- Copaxone, $3267.05
Gilenya is not yet in the database.
* I have no idea why the cost of Betaseron is so high.
Photo of some building at Sarah Lawrence College, which charges $43,556 for tuition and "fees."
