Foster City, Calif.-based Gilead Sciences’s Sovaldi received approval in December from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The typical 12-week drug regimen costs $84,000, but some patients require the drug for a longer period of time, and guidelines suggest taking the drug along with others, adding to the overall care costs, according to a Kaiser Health News report.
J. Mario Molina, president and CEO of Molina Healthcare, a Medicaid managed care company, said in the report Medicaid programs like his will be hard hit by the financial burden of the drug.
“[Sovaldi is] far superior to anything we’ve had to treat hepatitis C. The problem is it’s extraordinarily expensive,” Mr. Molina said in the report.
Sovaldi has a success rate of more than 90 percent, and Gilead says its effectiveness warrants the high price, according to the report.
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