Posted by Michael Wonder on 05 Mar 2018
Case of the $21 million Medicaid patient shows how drug prices soar for rare diseases
5 March 2018 - The child is well-known in the halls where state bureaucrats oversee healthcare for millions of Californians — not by name, but by a number: $21 million.
His medications alone cost state taxpayers that much in a single year, not including other healthcare. The boy, whose identity has not been released, was California's most expensive Medicaid patient in recent years. His case was singled out in a tweet last year by the state's top healthcare official to highlight the public insurance program's extraordinary obligations as a backstop for low-income patients.
How on Earth can a single child's treatment cost that much? The answer: He has haemophilia and needs large quantities of a pricey drug — known as clotting factor — that makes blood coagulate.
