Cigna, CVS Health and Anthem aim to help employers afford gene therapies that can cost more than $2 million
By Joseph Walker and Anna Wilde Mathews Sept. 5, 2019 6:00 am ET Insurers are scrambling to blunt the expense of new drugs that can carry prices of more than $2 million per treatment, offering new setups aimed at making the cost of gene therapies more manageable for employers.
The protection plans are limited so far, and it isn’t clear that the insurers will be able to bring down the overall costs of the therapies, as opposed to simply spreading them out. Insurers say they are pushing for deals that tie payments for gene therapies and other high-cost medicines to their results in patients.
Meantime, Spark Therapeutics Inc. listed Luxturna, which treats a form of inherited vision loss, at $850,000. The protection plans represent an additional approach. The Cigna program, called Embarc Benefit Protection, will launch with Zolgensma and Luxturna for 2020, and the company aims to add more drugs in the future, Dr. Miller said.
A spokeswoman for AveXis, the Novartis subsidiary that developed Zolgensma, said the company hasn’t been briefed on the new insurance payment plans, but recognizes “innovative therapies like Zolgensma require innovative solutions for access.”
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