New Orleans In this brave new world of medicine involving stem cells and gene therapy, all of which were almost unimaginable in the past, we still are hitting our heads against the wall at the inability to craft a solution to the old problem in the United States of equal access and affordability. Doctors are estimating the price tags on some of these treatments could hit up to $1 million in our current system. Lacking universal health care in the United States that spells death and disaster for many families in the 99%.
When the FDA approves a treatment, especially if it is the only one likely to be effective, similar to the sickle-cell disease effecting so many in lower income, minority neighborhoods, government and private health care insurers face an moral obligation to provide the coverage and pay the bill. We’ve been seeing too many stories of pharmaceutical companies jacking up the bill for rare medicines with limited manufacturing capabilities and forcing insurers to pay or families to do without. Insurers, drug companies, and even government health officials since the Affordable Care Act fights have danced around so-called “death panels” or anything that might seem to impose price ceilings or the rationing of care, leaving us sucking air for a solution.
Michael Sherman, the chief medical officer of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Massachusetts, has made the case in Scientific American that under the existing regime something that might work would be a value-based agreement between institutions, drug companies, and insurers for new drugs. The essence of the agreement is that if it works, they get paid their demand price, and if it doesn’t work, they are paid a substantially lowered price. Sherman wonders if such agreements might work for gene therapies as well.
It seems a stretch. Yes, making the companies prove their mettle is appealing, but it doesn’t deal with the issue that companies are setting exorbitant prices for any and all drugs in the first place in the US, the likes of which we see nowhere else in the world. For example, the inventors of insulin donated the patent, rather than enriching themselves, but drug makers now charge $200 to $300 a vial for this lifesaver, many decades after its discovery. It is hard to imagine gene therapies that depend on doctors, drug companies, hospitals, and insurers at this point would be able to come to a reasonable agreement that would make such treatment affordable to all. I would have more hope for Congress!
Like it or not, it is hard to avoid the root question even as many speculate on how far they can climb out on the branches before falling: we need universal health care protection for all Americans! Without it, specialized drugs and path-breaking gene treatments, will make hospitals the new playgrounds of the rich, while the rest of us suffer and die.