Price ticket for a questionable Alzheimer’s remedy: $109,000 per affected person, per yr. Unclear but: For what number of years?

The real costs of the new Alzheimer’s drug, Leqem­bi — and why tax­pay­ers will foot much of the bill (CBS Information):

The primary drug pur­port­ing to sluggish the advance of Alzheimer’s dis­ease is like­ly to price the U.S. well being care sys­tem bil­lions annu­al­ly even because it stays out of attain for lots of the low­er-income seniors most like­ly to suf­fer from dementia.

Medicare and Med­ic­assist sufferers will make up 92% of the mar­ket for lecanemab, accord­ing to Eisai Co., which sells the drug underneath the model identify Leqem­bi. In addi­tion to the com­pa­ny’s $26,500 annu­al price ticket for the drug, deal with­ment might price U.S. tax­pay­ers $82,500 per affected person per yr, on aver­age, for genet­ic exams and fre­quent mind scans, protected­ty mon­i­tor­ing, and oth­er care, accord­ing to esti­mates from the Insti­tute for Clin­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Overview, or ICER.

… To qual­i­fy for Leqem­bi, sufferers should underneath­go a PET scan that appears for amy­loid plaques, the professional­tein clumps that clog the brains of many Alzheimer’s sufferers. About 1 in 5 sufferers who took Leqem­bi within the main clin­i­cal check of the drug devel­oped mind hem­or­rhag­ing or swelling, a danger that requires these tak­ing the drug to underneath­go fre­quent med­ical test­ups and mind scans referred to as MRIs … Out­stand­ing doubts about Leqem­bi and relat­ed medication have giv­en urgency to efforts to mon­i­tor affected person expe­ri­ences. CMS is requir­ing Leqem­bi sufferers to be entered right into a reg­istry that tracks their out­comes … In a let­ter to CMS on July 27, a bunch of pol­i­cy specialists stated CMS ought to make sure that any and all Leqem­bi reg­istries cre­ate and share information detailed sufficient for researchers and FDA protected­ty groups to acquire a transparent pic­ture of the drug’s real-world profile.

Information in Context: