New Hepatitis Drugs Push Up Prescription Spending

The Associated Press: Report: Specialty Drugs Drive Prescription Spending Jump
Prescription drugs spending jumped 13 percent last year, the biggest annual increase since 2003, according to the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits manager. Express Scripts Holding Co. said Tuesday that the jump was fueled in part by pricey specialty drugs that accounted for more than 31 cents of every dollar spent on prescriptions even though they represented only 1 percent of all U.S. prescriptions filled. (3/10)

CQ Healthbeat: Hepatitis Pills Contributed To 13 Percent Spike In Drug Spending
Costly new hepatitis pills helped drove a 13 percent increase in drug spending last year among insurer-managed plans in the United States, a rate not seen in more than a decade, according to a report from the pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts. A course of therapy to treat the liver-damaging hepatitis C virus could cost as much as $150,000 with the approvals of medicines such as Gilead Sciences Inc.'s Sovaldi and Harvoni and Johnson & Johnson's Olysio, Express Scripts said in the report, released Tuesday. (Young, 3/10)

Kaiser Health News: FDA Heads Into Uncharted Territory Of ‘Biosimiliar’ Drugs
Mark McCamish spent more than five years preparing for a presentation he gave at the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters this winter. McCamish is in charge of biopharmaceutical drug development at the Sandoz division of Switzerland’s Novartis. He and his colleagues made the case to a panel of 14 cancer specialists and a group of regulators that a company drug code-named EP2006 should be approved for sale in the U.S. The drug, brand name Zarxio, is similar to but not quite identical to Amgen’s Neupogen, a medicine approved by the FDA back in 1991 to fight infections in cancer patients. (Gordon, 3/10)