Tuesday, June 8th 2021
Criticism of Alzheimer’s drug
$ 56,000 for a year of hope
The effectiveness of aducanumab is controversial. Even so, the new Alzheimer’s drug is said to cost $ 56,000 per patient per year. The demand is likely to be high. The manufacturer’s shareholders are enthusiastic, and patient advocates are indignant.
The price for the Alzheimer’s drug from the biotech group Biogen, which has now been approved for the first time in the USA, has exceeded even the wildest expectations of industry experts. Financial analysts had expected that a private company would insist on using the time-limited monopoly of an expected blockbuster to make money after years of expensive development work. For example, the analysis company Evercore ISI had estimated the price at 10,000 US dollars per patient and year, the Swiss bank UBS even at 24,000. Multiplied by millions of potential female patients worldwide, such prices would have raked Biogen billions every year.
But Biogen obviously does not want to be satisfied with that. Following FDA approval, the company announced that it would charge $ 56,000 for treatment with aducanumab. The indignation of patient advocates and activists who campaign for the affordability of drugs is great – just as great as the enthusiasm of investors on the stock market. The price of Biogen shares jumped 60 percent within minutes.
The expectations of investors and fears of patient advocates are based on the same assumption. Given the dire effects of the disease, Alzheimer’s patients, their relatives and insurers are likely to be willing or even forced to pay almost any price asked for aducanumab. The compound is the first newly approved Alzheimer’s drug in the United States in around 20 years.
Fair price estimated at $ 2,500 to $ 8,300
The fact that critics complain that the effects of aducanumab are by no means clearly proven by the studies submitted to the FDA should hardly detract from the demand. “People will pay 56,000 for a hope,” the Financial Times quotes David Mitchell, founder of the organization Patients for Affordable Drugs. Tahir Amin of the Drugs, Access and Knowledge Initiative told the newspaper that “companies like Biogen” should not “enrich themselves with demand based on false hopes.”
Prices for – especially patented – pharmaceuticals are a constant source of discussion. The pharmaceutical industry often argues that the prospect of high profits provided incentives for the expensive, and in many cases unsuccessful, research necessary to cure diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Insurance companies, authorities and organizations have developed various models to determine a fair value for patent-protected drugs.
According to the American Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, the price of aducanumab would only be justified if the drug was proven to stop Alzheimer’s disease, not just slow it down. A fair price based on the actual study results would be between $ 2,500 and a maximum of $ 8300 per year of treatment.
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