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Meds are expensive but push other costs down
Although they are expensive, MS disease-modifying therapies may drive down other healthcare costs, according to posters presented here. In one analysis, total health expenditures rose after patients started on these drugs, but medical costs unrelated to the drugs fell, Aaron Boster, MD, of Ohio Health, and colleagues reported at the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers meeting here.
In another, interferon beta-1a was associated with lower overall medical costs compared with several oral drugs, according to Amy Phillips, PharmD, of EMD Serono, although outside experts noted several caveats with the analysis.
Disease-modifying therapies have changed the management of patients with multiple sclerosis, but there’s little evidence on how the drugs impact the overall cost of care — beyond being expensive themselves. MS clinicians told MedPage Today that the exact prices of the drugs are hard to get a handle on, given differences driven by co-pays, coupons, patient assistance programs, and other incentives.
Both posters, however, offer an estimate of the costs associated with those drugs.
Boster and colleagues looked at claims data from Truven’s MarketScan database on 3,081 patients who started a disease-modifying therapy in 2013, and compared them with costs from the previous year, when they weren’t on the drugs.
Continue reading this educational article on the MS medication costs vs costs to the patient when not using a therapy.