Posted by Michael Wonder on 23 Jun 2020
Pricing remdesivir: a domestic reference price approach
23 June 2020 - As COVID-19 continues to ravage US communities, the costs in terms of lives and lost wages are severe, particularly among seniors and minority communities.
Treating COVID-19 shouldn’t disproportionately add to these costs, but the history of drug pricing in the United States provides reason for concern. The most prominent treatment, Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, does not yet have a price, creating an opportunity to think critically about what boundaries may help define a reasonable price.
While some boundaries have been suggested—ranging from $10 to cover only the cost of production to $4,500 to account for therapeutic benefit—we believe a more useful touchstone is the historical pricing of similar drugs.
