APNewsBreak: Medicare spending $9B on hepatitis C drugs
WASHINGTON (AP) — Medicare spending on breakthrough medications for hepatitis C will nearly double this year, passing $9 billion, according to new government figures. That's raising insurance costs for all beneficiaries, whether or not they have the liver-wasting viral disease.
The price of drugs is the public's top health care concern in opinion polls, and the 2016 presidential candidates are increasingly paying attention. The federal Department of Health and Human Services will have a public forum next week to examine the high cost of new drugs for difficult diseases. The challenge: how to reward drug company research while keeping innovative medications affordable for patients, insurers, employers and government programs.
New cost estimates indicate that Medicare's popular prescription drug program will spend $9.2 billion on hepatitis C drugs this year, a 96 percent increase from $4.7 billion in 2014. That works out to nearly 7 percent of drug costs for all of Part D, as the program is known. The Associated Press requested the numbers from Medicare's Office of the Chief Actuary, a unit that handles economic analysis.
Hepatitis C affects some 3 million people in the U.S. and claims more lives here than AIDS. More than three out of four infected adults are baby boomers, the age group now entering Medicare. It's primarily spread by contact with infected blood.
Patients say "hep C" feels like a bad flu that never goes away. While the disease advances gradually, it can ultimately destroy the liver, requiring a transplant to save the patient's life. The new drugs cure the disease but treatment can cost from $80,000 to $100,000.