THAT will be the cost to private healthcare insurance carriers….
The cost to the government healthcare systems will be $2,340…..
Getting the treatment for the virus will NOT be free and available to everyone it seems in the first phase of the drugs rollout…
America IS capitalist country try….
Health seems to be about profit making from the Trump admin….
Remdesivir, the first drug shown to be effective against the coronavirus, will be distributed under an unusual agreement with the federal government that establishes nonnegotiable prices and prioritizes American patients, health officials announced on Monday.
The arrangement may serve as a template for distribution of new treatments and vaccines as the pandemic swells, said Ernst Berndt, a retired health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.
Remdesivir will be sold for $520 per vial, or $3,120 per treatment course, to hospitals for treatment of patients with private insurance, according to the Department of Health and Human Services and Gilead Sciences, the drug’s manufacturer.
The price will be set at $390 per vial, or $2,340 per treatment course, for patients on government-sponsored insurance and for those in other countries with national health care systems.
The drug will be sold only in the United States through September, meaning American patients will receive almost the entirety of Gilead’s output, more than 500,000 treatment courses.
H.H.S. and state health departments have been allocating the drug to hospitals nationwide based on need. After September, they will no longer have a role in determining where the drug is sent.
“This is a U.S.-first policy,” said Rena Conti, a health care economist at Boston University. “Access is guaranteed to the U.S., but worldwide demand could potentially outstrip supplies.”
“I am unaware of any other policy except perhaps in bioterrorism drugs where there might be country-specific supplies,” she added.
Remdesivir is so far the only treatment shown to speed recovery time in severely ill coronavirus patients. A large clinical trial, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, found that the drug modestly shortened recovery time by four days, on average, but did not reduce fatalities.
The drug’s eventual cost has always been uncertain. “There is no playbook for how to price a new medicine in a pandemic,” Daniel O’Day, chief executive of Gilead, said in a statement.
Since the drug’s emergency authorization, Gilead has donated remdesivir to hospitals for treatment of patients with Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. The last shipments of donated drug were distributed on Monday.
The new pricing is not exorbitant, many experts said. Other promising drugs now in late-stage testing are already on the market for other purposes, Dr. Conti noted, and cost several times more than remdesivir.
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit group that calculates fair prices for drugs, estimated that Gilead would need to charge $1,600 per regimen to recoup its costs. But as much as $5,080 per treatment course would be still be a cost-effective price for insurers, given that patients would be able to leave the hospital sooner.
Critics have long accused Gilead of overcharging for groundbreaking drugs, including the first hepatitis C cures and Truvada, a daily pill to prevent H.I.V. infection….