Mylan dimethyl fumarate copay assistance8/31/2023 “There’s no other generics in the United States for any of the other 14 MS medications. “When Copaxone first hit the market in 1997, a year’s worth of prescriptions cost an average of $8,292. It now has several generic versions available in the United States,” said Kathy Costello, a registered nurse and the Associate Vice President of Healthcare Access at the National MS Society. The third medication available for MS in the US is a drug called Copaxone. “In the MS space, there’s not been a whole lot of generics, up until recently. First generation therapies, which first came to market in the 1990s with annual costs between $8,000 and $11,000, now cost over $60,000 per year.īut why do MS drugs keep getting so much more expensive? Several theories abound. According to a 2015 study published in Neurology, a medical journal, MS drug prices have been increasing “at rates 5 to 7 times higher than prescription drug inflation” since the 1990s. While the publicly available pricing data only covers part of this decade, prices have been trending upward like this for over 20 years. Out of 15 different MS-related prescription drugs filled using Medicaid from 2012 to 2016, 11 have increased in price faster than the average rate for all Medicaid drugs: 5.74 percent each year, or 23 percent over that entire period.įor Medicare Part D, the part of Medicare that covers prescription drugs, the increases are similarly exponential: 13 out of 15 MS drugs have outpaced Part D’s overall average rate of 2.4 percent each year. However, the numbers for MS drugs on public insurers are particularly staggering. Much of that money is spent on prescription drugs, which have seen price increases, across the board, that have outpaced the inflation rate for years. Generally, doctors can identify the disease through lesions that appear in brain scans. Initial symptoms are frequently misdiagnosed by doctors, and a correct MS diagnosis can sometimes take years to happen. Some patients with severe cases find themselves unable to work or even perform basic life functions. Symptoms include, but are not limited to, severe fatigue, heat sensitivity, compromised vision and intense pain. ![]() ![]() MS is a disease in which the insulating sheaths of nerve cells, which are made of a protein called myelin, become damaged, and is believed to be caused by an overactive immune system. For a disease that has no known cure, and requires frequent medical attention to manage symptoms that can completely debilitate a person if left untreated, that can mean spending $4.1 million over the course of a lifetime, according to the same study. According to a 2016 study in the American Journal of Managed Care, treating it can cost patients anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 per year, which can meet or even exceed the average US household median income, depending on how severe your case is. Multiple Sclerosis is a very expensive disease.
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