VIDEO: Will new HCV drugs’ costs kill health care budgets?

BOSTON – The estimated cost of treating all eligible U.S. hepatitis C patients with a new generation of high-priced medications may be breathtaking, but would the resulting savings over those cured patients’ lifetimes offset the initial financial blow?

A new analysis unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases calculated the impact of the new drugs on treatment costs and compared the cost of treatment with new drugs to the old standard of care.

“We found that the cost of treatment is very high, as expected,” explained lead investigator Jagpreet Chhatwal, Ph.D., of MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. In fact, if everyone who was eligible for the new drugs were treated, the cost over the next 5 years would be $136 billion.

“This is clearly unsustainable for any payer,” he noted. “So the question is: How can we manage to treat people who need this treatment?”

In a video interview, Dr. Chhatwal outlined how the researchers calculated their cost estimates, what cost savings could be gained with the new drugs, and how patients and payers alike could manage the price of treatment.

BOSTON – The estimated cost of treating all eligible U.S. hepatitis C patients with a new generation of high-priced medications may be breathtaking, but would the resulting savings over those cured patients’ lifetimes offset the initial financial blow?

A new analysis unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases calculated the impact of the new drugs on treatment costs and compared the cost of treatment with new drugs to the old standard of care.

“We found that the cost of treatment is very high, as expected,” explained lead investigator Jagpreet Chhatwal, Ph.D., of MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. In fact, if everyone who was eligible for the new drugs were treated, the cost over the next 5 years would be $136 billion.

“This is clearly unsustainable for any payer,” he noted. “So the question is: How can we manage to treat people who need this treatment?”

In a video interview, Dr. Chhatwal outlined how the researchers calculated their cost estimates, what cost savings could be gained with the new drugs, and how patients and payers alike could manage the price of treatment.

BOSTON – The estimated cost of treating all eligible U.S. hepatitis C patients with a new generation of high-priced medications may be breathtaking, but would the resulting savings over those cured patients’ lifetimes offset the initial financial blow?

A new analysis unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases calculated the impact of the new drugs on treatment costs and compared the cost of treatment with new drugs to the old standard of care.

“We found that the cost of treatment is very high, as expected,” explained lead investigator Jagpreet Chhatwal, Ph.D., of MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. In fact, if everyone who was eligible for the new drugs were treated, the cost over the next 5 years would be $136 billion.

“This is clearly unsustainable for any payer,” he noted. “So the question is: How can we manage to treat people who need this treatment?”

In a video interview, Dr. Chhatwal outlined how the researchers calculated their cost estimates, what cost savings could be gained with the new drugs, and how patients and payers alike could manage the price of treatment.