While the Gilead laboratory is in the process of negotiating the price of the new drug Solvadi, 5 members of the majority are asking the manufacturer to lower the current price, considered exorbitant.
“The price of Solvadi will drop”, this is what has just declared Michel Joly, president of the American pharmaceutical company Gilead, contacted by why actor. In full negotiation on the price of this new drug against hepatitis C, five deputies of the majority have just written to him (1), so that he reduces the price of Solvadi. It is indeed an innovative drug, which can cure patients in more than 90% of cases. In addition, they are oral tablets, very well tolerated whereas the previous treatments were done by injection and presented many undesirable effects. The duration of treatment is also shorter, 3 months compared to 12 to 24 months previously. So many advantages, but a major disadvantage, its cost.
A manufacturing cost of 200 euros
It takes around 56,000 euros per patient. However, according to the deputies, its cost price is 200 euros, which would therefore amount to making it pay 280 times more expensive. For Michel Joly, this letter from the deputies is an opportunity to explain these questions. “You can’t boil down profitability to the cost of manufacturing a drug alone, that doesn’t make sense,” he explains. We must take into account the investment of research, the number of molecules developed and ultimately abandoned. But our wish is that patients can access treatment. We want a European price, and it will go down ”. In Germany, for example, the cost is 49,000 euros for 12 weeks of treatment. But according to the deputy for Haute-Garonne, Gérard Bapt, one of the signatories of the letter, it is not only research, but the acquisition strategies of companies that are pushing up prices.
Listen to Gérard Bapt, deputy for Haute-Garonne: “The Gilead laboratory bought a start-up holding the patent for $ 11 billion. Health insurance and social insurance do not have to bear the cost of this acquisition ”
In view of the cost of treatment, the question today is whether to treat all patients. The High Authority for Health has just published its recommendations and considers that there is no individual interest in immediately initiating treatment. The advantage would, however, be collective, in order to limit the spread of the virus. HAS, on the other hand, recommends treating patients with severe disease straight away. Hepatitis C is characterized, in fact, by a slow evolution, from the F0 stage without symptoms, to the F4 stage which corresponds to cirrhosis.
In addition, French doctors had conducted a study and showed that the treatment was cost-effective only for patients with moderate to severe form. The HAS college “fears the major budgetary impact of these products and the risks of waiving the support by national solidarity of other treatments that this would induce”. Because if we treated 60,000 patients, according to the deputies, we would arrive at an expenditure of 3.6 billion euros. Difficult to accept when the government has just announced that it is seeking to make nearly 3 billion euros in savings on health.
(1) Letter signed by deputies Gérard Bapt, Catherine Lemorton, Olivier Veran, Bernadette Laclais and Jean-Louis Touraine
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