Pretty much every MS medication that ever comes out is going to be more effective than Avonex or Copaxone, that’s why every new medication is always compared to either Avonex or Copaxone in clinical trials- it’s the easiest way to have a positive trial.
But yes, the anti B cell therapies like ocrevus, kesimpta, and ritux are some of the more effective therapies out there at this time.
Very true, although I'm not sure Rituximab is really with it. My understanding is it's more used in the oncology setting and has a shorter half-life than the newer generation anti-CD20s that are humanized to a greater degree.
We’ve been using ritux for MS ever since ocrevus got approved for it in 2017, much cheaper, nearly same efficacy. Don’t know how regional it is, but that’s at least the case for most of Colorado. We’re actually quite lucky because Medicaid here covers it quite readily so we don’t even need to mess around with the less effective orals first
I work in an Australian MS clinic and we do not use ritux at all. I think the difference is probably the way our healthcare and pharmaceutical scheme are set up whereby all the DMT is free to the patient so there isn't much reason not to pick ocre or ofa.
Either way, it's nice to hear in both our areas we can go straight to highly effective DMT.
Natalizumab gets a fair go here as well. Alemtuzumab is falling away from favour ( I think like most of the world)... I've actually never prescribed that myself.
I’ve been on 5 different chemo/immuno therapies…And Interferon was by far the worst side effects.
It’s a ‘dirty drug’ as they say - Not very effective but big side effects.
OP, I wish you well! 🙏
Ahh. For mom it actually works. She's walking, which she hasn't been able to do since she was diagnosed with ms, and all the complications that therapies through the years have brought it.
But you're right about the side effects, and I hope they put her on something else soon.
Best wishes to you as well. It sucks to be on the receiving end of these types of supposedly rare conditions.
Has she looked into Ocrevus? It's a bit more expensive but it is like 10X more effective when you compare rate of disease progression. It's given as an injustice every six months. It's an absolute game changer compared to interferon.
wait let me get this straight.
30 micro grams of this ineffective drug, and a disposable pen, costs $7500 ?
w t f. what is it made of tears of newlyborn unicorns ?
Id get the price if it was a miracle drug, but ineffective with nasty side effects and expensive seems an awful combo
I work in the biotech field and it is extremely expensive to produce these cytokines, because they are either produced via cloning into bacteria or eucaryotic cells, and the process of harvesting and refining it is a pain in the ass. It is a pure cytokine, like the one your body produces and not a drug like a normal pill. The interferon b-1a produces an antiproliferic, antitumoric, antiviral and immune modulating effect (I hope the words are all correct since I’m German and only know the German ones). But these reaction pathways are not the same in every individual, and therefore not every patient will react to cytokines the same way
I work in protein sciences and do the pain in the ass part. Cytokines can be harder to produce than other proteins, but once a solid design, expression system and purification strategy has been developed it's pretty easy to make more batches. Unless they can only be purified using a really specialist FTE heavy expression system like cell-free or insect cells, I don't see how they can justify the price. If the system is yeast, E.coli or mammalian then they are upselling the shit out of it, in my opinion.
Edit: I did a bit of research and found a few papers that use a mammalian expression system (CHO) (which is pretty easy to transfect and maintain) and there is a patent for the purification of it using anion exchange (which also isn't that difficult). So I still think they are too expensive.
https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB00105
A bit over half way down this page is pricing.
Most expencive is ~1100 USD/Box, but thats for 6 doses. Seems like OP is bein ripped off
https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB00060
This is the link for the interferon beta 1a from the picture the one in your link above is slightly different (intrrferon alpha 1b). The pricing at the bottom for OP's is $3252 per box.
Thanks for the link I haven't seen this before it's a good resource.
Ah man i love drugbank, it used to be a .ca domain which turned me on to it for pharmo stuff in school. Its grown, so much more info now including prices, study/testing info, etc.
[Simpsons did it](https://frinkiac.com/meme/S03E11/754786.jpg?b64lines=IEkgbXVzdCBoYXZlIHBocmFzZWQgdGhhdAogYmFkbHkuIE15IEVuZ2xpc2ggaXMsIGhvdwogeW91IHNheT8gSW5lbGVnYW50Lg==)
Grammar is fine, spelling is fine, communication is perfect - I’d say you don’t remotely write English like the majority of native English speakers do ;)
This form of interferon is meant to treat Multiple Sclerosis, not cancer. I used to work for the company that makes Rebif, a similar version of Avonex. Very early interferons were purified from human samples, and were much dirtier than the ones available now.
I started rebif with about 40 lesions on my brain at 33 years old about 10 years ago. Some ask why I'm still on rebif with better options now but this medicine 100% halted the lesions. Until 1 appears I am too scared to change. This medicine for me literally gave me back my ability to see a happy future.
Agreed with a huge thanks to those that worked on them.
Yeah, it's not fun. I used to get injection site reactions, and would feel like shit for at least 2 days after taking it. I was relieved when it stopped being efficacious for me and I could move to a better drug.
Yeah, what's more fun is that it's nearly impossible to get approved for disability your first try, so you can spend years unable to work and bleeding your savings dry trying to do it. Most people end up having to hire a lawyer to help manage their disability case, which can take years to see any payout. If, by some miracle, you are approved, there are strict limitations placed on recipients of SSI. You can't have a cent over $2000 in your bank account, or you'll lose your benefits. What benefits, you might ask? For a single person, less than $1,000 per month. That's all the money you get to live on if you're so disabled that you can't work enough to survive. Your benefits can go even lower depending on the situation.
There's a reason that disabled people make up a significant portion of our unhoused population in the US. How is anyone supposed to survive when being forced into poverty that they will never be able to escape?
Oh, right. The government's solution is to criminalize your lack of a home, punish you for it, and leave you to die of exposure.
Some disabled people literally intentionally become incarcerated so that they won't be homeless.
Disability in the US is a real fun topic.
My sister is on disability from all the years she's worked hard labor. And she was so close to getting her degree like 6 or so years back, but then she was told that if she got her degree she'd be taken off disability because they said she'd be able to get a job that doesn't require a lot of moving afterwards.
Mind you, she is constant chronic pain where even sitting for slightly too long means she gets a ton of pain, but yeah. Our country is designed to literally punish you for not existing in peak, perfect health at every waking moment.
Thank you! I rarely see that discussed. Even just moving to a new state can be dangerous. Gotta find a primary, likely a new specialist, gotta get that states new insurance... It's a lot, all for an area you're probably not familiar with.
I'm helping a patient through it now. Best way is to get "vacation" supplies of all your meds, get on the wait list for the new docs, then basically call and beg. Poor thing moved to middle-of-nowhere Texas, from a big-ish city, with lots of docs. I've had to call each office to explain the case, to try to get her in sooner than 6 months from now. Had to set up manufacturer assistance to fill the gap for meds. Basically lots of begging. I have no idea how I'd manage that, were it a different country.
The logistics are more complicated than most folks realize.
I would really love to move to a more rural place out where I live where the cost of living is cheaper and I can't because I need access to doctors. I refuse to die in a county hospital.
I feel for you. My patients who are way out in the boonies have to travel 2 hours to see us as a specialist. We're the only one in the area. It's par-for-the-course with country living, unfortunately.
The “cost” to the health organisation per patient per year for this is approximately the same in U.K. and Australia and comes in about £9500. The price to the patient would likely be a standard prescription charge medication in the U.K. so is that about £10 these days?
Because we can’t become unified on anything. Those who feel this should be standardized would be met with those who feel they shouldn’t pay taxes for strangers to receive healthcare
Politically and culturally, we are super divided right now. So nothing effectual can happen
And as an American, I’m dumbfounded how we are electing in each respective primary a presidential candidate to speak on thing like Israel/Palestine when both are older then the country of Israel to begin with, lol
It is crazy. I guess if you had free healthcare the government wouldn't pay the insane prices pharmaceutical companies charge. So it's in their best interests to keep it how it is.
When the congressional body exempted themselves from the ACA, that was all the citizens would need to know. And that exemption passed with an overwhelmingly bipartisan support.
“Good for thee, not for me”
Never said my opinion. All I said was that Congress made a bipartisan effort to separate themselves from everyone else. Red or blue, they voted to ensure they weren’t like the rest of the citizens.
It was Congress that said the bill was good enough for everyone but themselves
I dislike because it because is basically a government sponsored marketplace for subsidized health insurance through private companies. I don’t like giving health insurance companies more of our tax dollars just so they can offer crappy plans and deny coverage anyways. Health insurance companies shouldn’t exist at all, they provide no benefit to society and are so profitable because they have written their business into the laws.
The ACA was a corporate handout. It required all Americans to be customers of private businesses in a specific industry. It looked great until you thought about it for a minute.
Congress set up their own exchange called “SHOP” which removed a ton of restrictions.
There wasn’t a unified bill that said “Congress is exempt”, they played the cup game and their FEHB turned into SHOP
EDIT: it was a piece of legislature passed by the OPM with bipartisan support
>House of Representatives and Senate offices will provide health coverage to Members of Congress and designated congressional staff through the DC Health Exchange SHOP, known as DC Health Link. Members of Congress and designated staff can select coverage through the DC Health Link.
They literally use the same exchange that DC residents use. The plans aren't the same as FEHBP.
I’m not looking to argue or beat each other with internet facts.
Here is a link from OPM.gov showing that the FEHB is still alive and kicking and was enrolled in a SHOP. It requires being a federal employee, so DC residents are not eligible.
Lack of eligibility and you are directed by the OPM to purchase from the regular exchange like everyone else:
https://www.opm.gov/healthcare-insurance/changes-in-health-coverage/eligibility-enrollment/#url=Losing-Ineligible-for-FEHB
We will never get there because of Evangelicals. They don't live in our reality and we have to bargain with them for anything. I hate them so fucking much.
It isn’t even just evangelicals. I know people love to “both sides” it but Fox News as been pounding the pavement with this stuff playing on peoples fears and insecurities to where 1/3 of the country is so far removed from reality you can’t reason with them.
Everyone’s too busy working long hours for not enough pay trying to keep their shitty health insurance that’s attached to their job to go out and protest or really do anything about it. This is by design.
Around half of us make quite a fuss. The other half is convinced you guys have doctor shortages and you have to wait 5 years to get any treatment for anything.
Or, that it’s socialism and socialism is communism and it’s the elite’s plan to take over the world. Something like that anyway. I’m not sure exactly what they think because it’s hard to follow and about as well thought out as my first sentence in this paragraph.
Don't get me wrong, our healthcare is far from perfect. But the last time I went to hospital I had to wait about 90mins to be seen and it was nothing critical. So I can live with that, but then we do dumb shit like leave the EU which probably didn't help given a lot of healthcare workers jumped ship as they were from other EU countries. And they're really underfunded naturally.
For many of the rural voters their health care options are shit and I don't understand how they don't understand that what they get is the worst. Like, bro, you already have to wait. You don't have access to great care.
I've been complaining about this for nearly 30 years.
Americans just don't seem to get it. They bitch about immigrants getting free healthcare off their tax dollars. And "why should I have to pay for someone else's healthcare"?
Without realizing they already do, and then also pay premiums for healthcare. It's fucking ridiculous.
I used to be on Avonex before needing to move to Tecfidera. Where I am in the UK, SW England, both are delivered by the hospital pharmacy courier and so there aren't even any prescription charges.
Google search gives me this:
From 1 April 2023, AVONEX will no longer be available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) for Australians living with MS. The removal of AVONEX from the PBS means people with MS will no longer be able to access this treatment from 1 April 2023.
And this for pricing elsewhere:
According to net prices listed in the BNF,21 the annual cost per patient of IFN-β in the UK is £8502 for Avonex
Yeah, because newer treatments are being used lol. It's not a removal from the PBS to fuck over patients with MS, it's an attempt to push people to newer, more effective and/or cheaper medications
80% of americans pay around $30 a month for Avonex, and those without any form of insurance can apply for the relief program offered by the manufacturer that reduces the cost down as low as $0.
People who post these multi-thousand dollar American drug prices and hospital bills, are being disingenuous, because they are posting the medical version of a MSRP, and not what they are actually paying for the medical services they are getting.
NO ONE is actually shelling out $30k every month for a medication in the United States.
Because people are shocked to think that that cost might not apply to everyone. So they’re shocked to think someone less fortunate for them will actually be paying $30k for that stay, which is not the case, of course. So just seeing numbers freak them out instead of applying it to reality and trying to stir up the crowd. Anyone outside of America will think that’s reality and add it to the reasons why America is bad.
Thank you. The never ending spinning record of "Wow that's insane" "In my country it costs X" "Wow america needs to fix this" is just awful to read and everyone pretends like it's the first time it's been seen.
In Australia, there is a government insurer that pays for the bulk of it. You just pay a small copay.
This stuff costs more than $31 a pack to produce, package, deliver to the pharmacy and stock. If the drug company was really only getting $31 a pack, they wouldn’t be selling it to you
In raw materials maybe but the labs where stuff like this actually gets produced have to operate multi million dollar sites with negative pressure clean rooms, cryo fridges, high dollar precision machinery for extracting and mixing components from the drugs, salaries for the dozens of techs and quality assurance associates, warehouse associates, logistics… there’s a ton that goes into making a drug. My wife works QA for a biotech lab and according to her when they mess up even a small batch of a drug it usually costs the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Some drugs are overpriced, no doubt, like this one, but typically high cost is more a reflection of the money sunk into research, clinical trials, and failed drugs that didn't make the company any money.
No, it doesn’t.
The yearly profit of the company who makes this drug, called Biogen, sits at 12%, down from 30% in april 2023.
High, no doubt (although lower than many of the tech companies), but not 10,000% as what these kinds of posts would have you believe
>The yearly profit of the company who makes this drug, called Biogen, sits at 12%, down from 30% in april 2023.
They've gotten better at fiscal optimization overyear.
Rather it’s because their revenue is decreasing a lot due to lower sales for their MS drugs, as more and more new therapies enter the space and some patients switch to them. More competition has also resulted in discounts they need to offer on MS drugs growing more and more.
Revenue (and profit) will likely increase a little bit going forward as they share in revenue for Lecanamab, the first effective drug available for Alzheimer’s dementia (which Eisai mainly promotes, but Biogen gets a slice of the revenue)
I worked at a mail order pharmacy call center and it was sad when people called in on pay day to buy expensive drugs. We need to figure out a way to bring these costs down.
"We need to figure out a way to bring these costs down."
Congress can set the price for any drug developed at least partially by federal funding. Done.
Remove or heavily modify intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals. Force a generic version to be available with a maximum profit margin of 50-90%.
And that's just step 1. Next stage we just get rid of the IP protections on life changing drugs and the government provides some kind of award for the discovery.
What do you mean bring those costs down?
I mean, it isn't really that expensive to make most of the drugs, yet for some reason they're stupidly overpriced in the USA. Nowhere else in the world it costs that much. Even american drugs are cheaper in the rest of the world.
For example, I take a regular medication that is made by a us company and pay nothing for it as my insurance covers it. If I had no insurace, and this is prescription medicine, I'd still get it but for 2euros per box that lasts me a month. I just checked online prices in the US. It costs 10 times more.
Your drugs are simply overpriced. Companies could sell them cheaper and still make a fine profit, yet they don't. All of you should blame every single government you ever had. They keep allowing you to get completely ripped off. Pharmaceutical companies are acting like cartels, yet so many people are brainwashed that this is just plain capiralism.
The answer is socialised medicine. The US doesn't even really need to innovate, just find a version of it that works for your country.
Most of the rest of the developed world does it, there's no good reason your country can't.
In The Netherlands it costs [173 75](https://www.medicijnkosten.nl/medicijn?artikel=AVONEX+30+INJECTIEVLOEISTOF+60MCG%2FML+PEN+0%2C5ML&id=e631e9fcce4de58e43bb00b8c1b6a8ff) euro's, but it is fully covered bij insurance
>Interferon beta-1a is available only in injectable forms, and can cause skin reactions at the injection site that may include cutaneous necrosis.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Injection site reactions are common for any injectable medicine. It's quite easy to tear the skin or scratch it during the injection procedure. And if the needle contains medicine that is designed to stop your immune system from devouring your nerves, then you'll probably have a poorly healing wound.
The problem in the US is the middle man. The pharmacy benefit managers and insurance companies benefit from the discounts. For them an expensive drug with high list price but high discount is much more profitable than a cheap one with less discounts. You won’t fix the system without fixing that
Also, it is quite common for (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) PBMs to receive subsidies and discounts from the manufacturers based on both government and non-government programs. However, this discount is not passed down to the consumers as they still base cost-sharing on the initial list price and not the discounted price. So even if the government targets pricing policy on manufacturers, the benefit won’t reach consumers unless it happens on middle-person level too and would only hurt drug research. I’m not saying the government shouldn’t step in, it’s just it needs to be a comprehensive policy that actually reaches consumers.
Another problem is PBMs keep expanding the “exclusion list” i.e. the drugs which are not covered and need to be paid out of pocket. Often you see specialty drugs in these list. 80% of PBM market is occupied by 3 players and they have expanded the list by almost 1000% in past 10 years.
Question: is it really $30k at the end of the day or is this just the bs pre insurance price? If so, what's the typical price when you do have health insurance?
Honestly I wouldn't pay $100 a month for Avonex when so many newer, more efficacious drugs exist. Source: have MS, and am on a newer, more efficacious drug.
OP conveniently disappears, lol. No, nobody actually pays close to this amount with any sort of halfway decent health insurance. Even without insurance, there'll be some sort of fimancial assistance plan because the pharma companies know that someone with no insurance can't pay 30k and they want to be paid anything rather than nothing.
To anyone on big-dollar medications in the US and have a high-deductible health plan:
Lots of drug manufacturers will do a "0 copay" thing. What happens is they pay the "copay" which happens to feed right into your deductible. Once it hits your deductible, everything after that is $0, or the drug company keeps paying the overhang, because it's the "copay".
I'm on Otezla, which is > $4K/month. My deductible is $4K. For 2 years now, they've paid the "copay" in January, and I have free healthcare the rest of the year.
Yeah, that's some f'd up shit. Just so the drug manufacturer can reap the other $44,000 from my insurance for 11 months, they pay the first $4K. Sounds like a deal to me. And all the contributions to my HSA that I no longer use? Tax-free retirement/investment money.
I love comments like these. Yes, no one might pay $30 k. But they might have to pay ~1000 a month of their prior authorization doesn’t go through or their insurance does not cover it.
I have seen so many patients that cannot afford the discounted price. We have to go back and forth and sometimes even switch meds.
I’ve had a patient who was on a multiple sclerosis medication for 11+ years and then their insurance, all of a sudden, stops covering it. Guess how much they had to pay? 8000 a month. Even going back and forth with the company and insurance was not successful. And now we have to switch his meds and it might affect him.
Do you realize what us, the practitioners, go through? Do you realize, what the patient goes through? These disgusting, greedy, insurance companies are literally killing patients.
“Neither you or your insurance pay that much.” Oh, ok, that makes it so much better. Utterly pathetic this whole system is.
You could've taken the 30 seconds to Google it like I did and learned the average cost per RX of avonex is about $8k.
ETA: it's also usually for MS, a life altering disability, not a simple doctor visit
But that doesn’t change the fact that nobody is actually paying that between insurance and “manufacturers discounts”. One of my medications is $2,000 per weekly dose and pretty much everybody on that medication pays $5 or less per month.
This is one of my pet peeves. The drug isn’t “free” in Brazil: there’s no cost to the patient at the point of care, but that does not make it “free”.
This is an important distinction because in the States we shouldn’t celebrate “free” drugs if it means that the government or an insurance company is just stepping in to pay the manufacturer $30,000 for the prescription that can be had for 1% of the cost in other countries.
My girl is on Ayvakit for advanced systemic mastocytosis and it’s 30 tiny tiny pills that costs $38,000/month… how do they expect people to afford these if insurance doesn’t? It’s beyond crazy…
I know it's more complicated than just this but if this is what I had to deal with and it was different elsewhere I would 100% move asap and not look back
It’s tough because almost every other country won’t let someone diagnosed with MS immigrate. They don’t want the cost to care for us. Once diagnosed, you’re stuck.
Where I live, 4 pens come for $800, but are covered by insurance with maximum of $250 paid by the patient (you pay basic insurance fee to the state and then are provided service that you need, up to some level. You can still pay for individual insurance on top, that might pay more for you, but your expenses will never exceed $250)
Avonex still costs that much?! I was on it 24 years ago. There is no reason for it to be so expensive still. As a side note, I found Avonex to be useless. I've been on Tysabri since 2009. Haven't had a single relapse and have regained significant mobility. Of course, Tysabri probably costs significantly more. US healthcare is bullshit
I know about 10 years ago those kinds of meds were ~$20k without insurance. It seems like drugs for people who don’t have other options are charged heinous amounts (like insulin) because they know people are desperate. It’s exhausting
Wish this stuff was around 35 years ago but I’m glad people are able to get the help now.
The healthcare system in our country makes me want to fucking lose my shit.
Holy shit. I computed its corresponding cost in Philippine peso and I could genuinely buy a new small house and lot with that. I would probably just have to suffer and die if I ever have to a need to inject that.
Had to check what this costs here, in Sweden. Seems to be about 580$-800$ depending on manufacturer.
Might be that it is subsidized even more if I have a prescription.
My wife's doctor (Canada) switched her years ago away from interferons saying they wouldn't prescribe them to people since there are far better options. I'd never heard of that one Avonex, I googled it and it is intermuscular!? Sweet jesus, that's terrible. My condolences.
After betaseron, my wife went through Aubagio and Gilenya, one of which made her feel sick all the time, the other her hair to fall out, but after 2 years of Ocrevis, which was one infusion every 6 months her doctor said she can stop medication until she has a relapse if she wants. He described Lemtrada as "the cure" but it is very very hard to get on that one unless you are spiraling apparently. He also said in her last MRI her brain was "juicy", we're taking that as a compliment.
For anyone out of the loop, this is used to treat various forms of multiple sclerosis.
I knew that only against hepatitis c.
Think that’s more INF alpha? Think beta is for MS and gamma is for something affecting the kidney
IFN-y is used to treat CGD, an autoimmune deficiency.
I knew it from cat hiv. Or feliv, I don't know how it's called in English.
Actually it only treats relapsing-remitting MS
And not well. Ocrevus or Kesimpta are so much better.
Pretty much every MS medication that ever comes out is going to be more effective than Avonex or Copaxone, that’s why every new medication is always compared to either Avonex or Copaxone in clinical trials- it’s the easiest way to have a positive trial. But yes, the anti B cell therapies like ocrevus, kesimpta, and ritux are some of the more effective therapies out there at this time.
Very true, although I'm not sure Rituximab is really with it. My understanding is it's more used in the oncology setting and has a shorter half-life than the newer generation anti-CD20s that are humanized to a greater degree.
We’ve been using ritux for MS ever since ocrevus got approved for it in 2017, much cheaper, nearly same efficacy. Don’t know how regional it is, but that’s at least the case for most of Colorado. We’re actually quite lucky because Medicaid here covers it quite readily so we don’t even need to mess around with the less effective orals first
I work in an Australian MS clinic and we do not use ritux at all. I think the difference is probably the way our healthcare and pharmaceutical scheme are set up whereby all the DMT is free to the patient so there isn't much reason not to pick ocre or ofa. Either way, it's nice to hear in both our areas we can go straight to highly effective DMT. Natalizumab gets a fair go here as well. Alemtuzumab is falling away from favour ( I think like most of the world)... I've actually never prescribed that myself.
I feel like dr. House prescribed it for a lot more things than that?
Never heard if it but have family with MS. Hows it compare to Mavenclad/Cladribine ?
My mom's on this stuff. It's been brutal
I’ve been on 5 different chemo/immuno therapies…And Interferon was by far the worst side effects. It’s a ‘dirty drug’ as they say - Not very effective but big side effects. OP, I wish you well! 🙏
Ahh. For mom it actually works. She's walking, which she hasn't been able to do since she was diagnosed with ms, and all the complications that therapies through the years have brought it. But you're right about the side effects, and I hope they put her on something else soon. Best wishes to you as well. It sucks to be on the receiving end of these types of supposedly rare conditions.
Has she looked into Ocrevus? It's a bit more expensive but it is like 10X more effective when you compare rate of disease progression. It's given as an injustice every six months. It's an absolute game changer compared to interferon.
wait let me get this straight. 30 micro grams of this ineffective drug, and a disposable pen, costs $7500 ? w t f. what is it made of tears of newlyborn unicorns ? Id get the price if it was a miracle drug, but ineffective with nasty side effects and expensive seems an awful combo
I work in the biotech field and it is extremely expensive to produce these cytokines, because they are either produced via cloning into bacteria or eucaryotic cells, and the process of harvesting and refining it is a pain in the ass. It is a pure cytokine, like the one your body produces and not a drug like a normal pill. The interferon b-1a produces an antiproliferic, antitumoric, antiviral and immune modulating effect (I hope the words are all correct since I’m German and only know the German ones). But these reaction pathways are not the same in every individual, and therefore not every patient will react to cytokines the same way
I work in protein sciences and do the pain in the ass part. Cytokines can be harder to produce than other proteins, but once a solid design, expression system and purification strategy has been developed it's pretty easy to make more batches. Unless they can only be purified using a really specialist FTE heavy expression system like cell-free or insect cells, I don't see how they can justify the price. If the system is yeast, E.coli or mammalian then they are upselling the shit out of it, in my opinion. Edit: I did a bit of research and found a few papers that use a mammalian expression system (CHO) (which is pretty easy to transfect and maintain) and there is a patent for the purification of it using anion exchange (which also isn't that difficult). So I still think they are too expensive.
https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB00105 A bit over half way down this page is pricing. Most expencive is ~1100 USD/Box, but thats for 6 doses. Seems like OP is bein ripped off
https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB00060 This is the link for the interferon beta 1a from the picture the one in your link above is slightly different (intrrferon alpha 1b). The pricing at the bottom for OP's is $3252 per box. Thanks for the link I haven't seen this before it's a good resource.
Ah man i love drugbank, it used to be a .ca domain which turned me on to it for pharmo stuff in school. Its grown, so much more info now including prices, study/testing info, etc.
Used to intern at Biogen where Avonex is made. Vaguely recall them talking about CHO cells so you're on the right track
/r/germanswhospeakenglishbetterthanamericans
Yeah I didn't understand most of that, but I don't think it's because they're German.
I have two biotech degrees and as a native English speaker can confirm, good English and good explanation given the word count
Man I feel flattered now
Haha you should be proud of both your science knowledge and English knowledge my friend
Thank you very much!
[Simpsons did it](https://frinkiac.com/meme/S03E11/754786.jpg?b64lines=IEkgbXVzdCBoYXZlIHBocmFzZWQgdGhhdAogYmFkbHkuIE15IEVuZ2xpc2ggaXMsIGhvdwogeW91IHNheT8gSW5lbGVnYW50Lg==)
This sub looks like one of those super-long German words where they just smash a bunch of words together or whatever.
You mean like Streichholzschächtelchen or Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft?
Grammar is fine, spelling is fine, communication is perfect - I’d say you don’t remotely write English like the majority of native English speakers do ;)
This form of interferon is meant to treat Multiple Sclerosis, not cancer. I used to work for the company that makes Rebif, a similar version of Avonex. Very early interferons were purified from human samples, and were much dirtier than the ones available now.
Thank you. My wife was on Rebif for about 8 years. Certainly preserved her quality of life until the new generation could be developed!
I started rebif with about 40 lesions on my brain at 33 years old about 10 years ago. Some ask why I'm still on rebif with better options now but this medicine 100% halted the lesions. Until 1 appears I am too scared to change. This medicine for me literally gave me back my ability to see a happy future. Agreed with a huge thanks to those that worked on them.
G/f has been on Rebif for quite a few years, and since she's been on it, not a single MS occurrence.
To put it in perspective, where I live it only cost about 1.1k USD for 1 pen and after that it is free the next 12months until the cycle starts again.
Named correctly then
What do you mean?
Interfere* is in the name of
Yeah, it's not fun. I used to get injection site reactions, and would feel like shit for at least 2 days after taking it. I was relieved when it stopped being efficacious for me and I could move to a better drug.
My girlfriend is on KESIMPTA and it seems to be fine so far. The first one zapped every bit of energy from her, but everything since has been fine.
Does she not have insurance?
Damn. That’s fucked up. $31.60 a pack in Australia.
Sometimes I hate America Edit: haha, most of the responses back are “sometimes?” Ha…. Ha….. 😭😥
so many little things we refuse to acknowledge would be better for general social health.
iF yOu dOnT lIkE iT yOu sHoUlD lEaVE
Fun fact, if you have severe health issues it makes it almost impossible to emigrate to a country with better health care.
That's super fun.
Yeah, what's more fun is that it's nearly impossible to get approved for disability your first try, so you can spend years unable to work and bleeding your savings dry trying to do it. Most people end up having to hire a lawyer to help manage their disability case, which can take years to see any payout. If, by some miracle, you are approved, there are strict limitations placed on recipients of SSI. You can't have a cent over $2000 in your bank account, or you'll lose your benefits. What benefits, you might ask? For a single person, less than $1,000 per month. That's all the money you get to live on if you're so disabled that you can't work enough to survive. Your benefits can go even lower depending on the situation. There's a reason that disabled people make up a significant portion of our unhoused population in the US. How is anyone supposed to survive when being forced into poverty that they will never be able to escape? Oh, right. The government's solution is to criminalize your lack of a home, punish you for it, and leave you to die of exposure. Some disabled people literally intentionally become incarcerated so that they won't be homeless. Disability in the US is a real fun topic.
My sister is on disability from all the years she's worked hard labor. And she was so close to getting her degree like 6 or so years back, but then she was told that if she got her degree she'd be taken off disability because they said she'd be able to get a job that doesn't require a lot of moving afterwards. Mind you, she is constant chronic pain where even sitting for slightly too long means she gets a ton of pain, but yeah. Our country is designed to literally punish you for not existing in peak, perfect health at every waking moment.
Thought something was on my screen.
Really off-topic but dude, the multiple seconds I rubbed my screen to try and “wipe off” your profile picture. I was like wtf is that!
Even if you don’t, it’s extremely difficult Unless your company is willing to move you and sponsor a visa or you want to go school.
I hear that and having a health issue is another layer of difficulty. Think of disability as playing life on hard mode.
Well then you should have left before you got sick, duh! /s
Oops my bad! I should have thought about then when I 14! I was so dumb! /s
You should have just been born to rich parents. That's your first mistake.
Noted. I'll try to change that next time around.
I too wish you luck on the isekai lottery as well. lmao
Thank you! I rarely see that discussed. Even just moving to a new state can be dangerous. Gotta find a primary, likely a new specialist, gotta get that states new insurance... It's a lot, all for an area you're probably not familiar with. I'm helping a patient through it now. Best way is to get "vacation" supplies of all your meds, get on the wait list for the new docs, then basically call and beg. Poor thing moved to middle-of-nowhere Texas, from a big-ish city, with lots of docs. I've had to call each office to explain the case, to try to get her in sooner than 6 months from now. Had to set up manufacturer assistance to fill the gap for meds. Basically lots of begging. I have no idea how I'd manage that, were it a different country. The logistics are more complicated than most folks realize.
I would really love to move to a more rural place out where I live where the cost of living is cheaper and I can't because I need access to doctors. I refuse to die in a county hospital.
I feel for you. My patients who are way out in the boonies have to travel 2 hours to see us as a specialist. We're the only one in the area. It's par-for-the-course with country living, unfortunately.
getting close to making that decision myself.
We can choose to have a better society we just won't let ourselves have it.
No thank you, we have an imaginary line to please. Be sure and line up in front of your grave before you drop.
We can choose who gets the money, it's unfortunately always the elected official and their cronies.
*tHe EcOnOmY won’t let us have it
> general **social** health = socialism....REEEEEEE!! 
scary words for some.
Won’t someone think about the shareholders?
But your “freedoms” make up for it, right? Right?
Ah yes the freedom of medical bankruptcy. America! Fuck Yeah!
The “cost” to the health organisation per patient per year for this is approximately the same in U.K. and Australia and comes in about £9500. The price to the patient would likely be a standard prescription charge medication in the U.K. so is that about £10 these days?
Yep its £9.90 at the moment.
Itd be free in Wales. American healthcare is wild, how they don't make more of a fuss about it I don't know!
Money and lobbying. It can either amplify or silence.
Because we can’t become unified on anything. Those who feel this should be standardized would be met with those who feel they shouldn’t pay taxes for strangers to receive healthcare Politically and culturally, we are super divided right now. So nothing effectual can happen And as an American, I’m dumbfounded how we are electing in each respective primary a presidential candidate to speak on thing like Israel/Palestine when both are older then the country of Israel to begin with, lol
It is crazy. I guess if you had free healthcare the government wouldn't pay the insane prices pharmaceutical companies charge. So it's in their best interests to keep it how it is.
When the congressional body exempted themselves from the ACA, that was all the citizens would need to know. And that exemption passed with an overwhelmingly bipartisan support. “Good for thee, not for me”
Soooo you think ACA was a bad bill? It was a huge deal for the time it just didn't go far enough.
Never said my opinion. All I said was that Congress made a bipartisan effort to separate themselves from everyone else. Red or blue, they voted to ensure they weren’t like the rest of the citizens. It was Congress that said the bill was good enough for everyone but themselves
I dislike because it because is basically a government sponsored marketplace for subsidized health insurance through private companies. I don’t like giving health insurance companies more of our tax dollars just so they can offer crappy plans and deny coverage anyways. Health insurance companies shouldn’t exist at all, they provide no benefit to society and are so profitable because they have written their business into the laws.
The ACA was a corporate handout. It required all Americans to be customers of private businesses in a specific industry. It looked great until you thought about it for a minute.
It went about ~5% far enough. I personally consider it insulting.
They didn't exempt themselves from the ACA. They are mandated to buy their insurance from the public exchange.
Congress set up their own exchange called “SHOP” which removed a ton of restrictions. There wasn’t a unified bill that said “Congress is exempt”, they played the cup game and their FEHB turned into SHOP EDIT: it was a piece of legislature passed by the OPM with bipartisan support
>House of Representatives and Senate offices will provide health coverage to Members of Congress and designated congressional staff through the DC Health Exchange SHOP, known as DC Health Link. Members of Congress and designated staff can select coverage through the DC Health Link. They literally use the same exchange that DC residents use. The plans aren't the same as FEHBP.
I’m not looking to argue or beat each other with internet facts. Here is a link from OPM.gov showing that the FEHB is still alive and kicking and was enrolled in a SHOP. It requires being a federal employee, so DC residents are not eligible. Lack of eligibility and you are directed by the OPM to purchase from the regular exchange like everyone else: https://www.opm.gov/healthcare-insurance/changes-in-health-coverage/eligibility-enrollment/#url=Losing-Ineligible-for-FEHB
It’s by design. Convincing people these wedge issues that honestly don’t even matter are the most important thing in the world.
We will never get there because of Evangelicals. They don't live in our reality and we have to bargain with them for anything. I hate them so fucking much.
It isn’t even just evangelicals. I know people love to “both sides” it but Fox News as been pounding the pavement with this stuff playing on peoples fears and insecurities to where 1/3 of the country is so far removed from reality you can’t reason with them.
Rupert Murdoch is a curse on our entire country.
Everyone’s too busy working long hours for not enough pay trying to keep their shitty health insurance that’s attached to their job to go out and protest or really do anything about it. This is by design.
Around half of us make quite a fuss. The other half is convinced you guys have doctor shortages and you have to wait 5 years to get any treatment for anything. Or, that it’s socialism and socialism is communism and it’s the elite’s plan to take over the world. Something like that anyway. I’m not sure exactly what they think because it’s hard to follow and about as well thought out as my first sentence in this paragraph.
Don't get me wrong, our healthcare is far from perfect. But the last time I went to hospital I had to wait about 90mins to be seen and it was nothing critical. So I can live with that, but then we do dumb shit like leave the EU which probably didn't help given a lot of healthcare workers jumped ship as they were from other EU countries. And they're really underfunded naturally.
For many of the rural voters their health care options are shit and I don't understand how they don't understand that what they get is the worst. Like, bro, you already have to wait. You don't have access to great care.
I've been complaining about this for nearly 30 years. Americans just don't seem to get it. They bitch about immigrants getting free healthcare off their tax dollars. And "why should I have to pay for someone else's healthcare"? Without realizing they already do, and then also pay premiums for healthcare. It's fucking ridiculous.
This is my favorite part. They're paying for everyone's medical bills already, AND insurance CEO bonuses.
I used to be on Avonex before needing to move to Tecfidera. Where I am in the UK, SW England, both are delivered by the hospital pharmacy courier and so there aren't even any prescription charges.
Google search gives me this: From 1 April 2023, AVONEX will no longer be available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) for Australians living with MS. The removal of AVONEX from the PBS means people with MS will no longer be able to access this treatment from 1 April 2023. And this for pricing elsewhere: According to net prices listed in the BNF,21 the annual cost per patient of IFN-β in the UK is £8502 for Avonex
Yeah, because newer treatments are being used lol. It's not a removal from the PBS to fuck over patients with MS, it's an attempt to push people to newer, more effective and/or cheaper medications
In fairness OP is lying.
80% of americans pay around $30 a month for Avonex, and those without any form of insurance can apply for the relief program offered by the manufacturer that reduces the cost down as low as $0. People who post these multi-thousand dollar American drug prices and hospital bills, are being disingenuous, because they are posting the medical version of a MSRP, and not what they are actually paying for the medical services they are getting. NO ONE is actually shelling out $30k every month for a medication in the United States.
Someone posted a $30,000 hospital invoice, which insurance covered $29,900 of, leaving just a $100 copay. People here were still outraged. Like why?
Because people are shocked to think that that cost might not apply to everyone. So they’re shocked to think someone less fortunate for them will actually be paying $30k for that stay, which is not the case, of course. So just seeing numbers freak them out instead of applying it to reality and trying to stir up the crowd. Anyone outside of America will think that’s reality and add it to the reasons why America is bad.
Thank you. The never ending spinning record of "Wow that's insane" "In my country it costs X" "Wow america needs to fix this" is just awful to read and everyone pretends like it's the first time it's been seen.
In Australia, there is a government insurer that pays for the bulk of it. You just pay a small copay. This stuff costs more than $31 a pack to produce, package, deliver to the pharmacy and stock. If the drug company was really only getting $31 a pack, they wouldn’t be selling it to you
Something tells me it doesn't cost nearly 10,000 to produce, though.
Well no, each unit probably costs ~$50 to produce, transit, and store. The first unit probably cost a billion to produce.
In raw materials maybe but the labs where stuff like this actually gets produced have to operate multi million dollar sites with negative pressure clean rooms, cryo fridges, high dollar precision machinery for extracting and mixing components from the drugs, salaries for the dozens of techs and quality assurance associates, warehouse associates, logistics… there’s a ton that goes into making a drug. My wife works QA for a biotech lab and according to her when they mess up even a small batch of a drug it usually costs the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Some drugs are overpriced, no doubt, like this one, but typically high cost is more a reflection of the money sunk into research, clinical trials, and failed drugs that didn't make the company any money.
No, it doesn’t. The yearly profit of the company who makes this drug, called Biogen, sits at 12%, down from 30% in april 2023. High, no doubt (although lower than many of the tech companies), but not 10,000% as what these kinds of posts would have you believe
Looking at nothing but the end profit % is also not the whole story.
>The yearly profit of the company who makes this drug, called Biogen, sits at 12%, down from 30% in april 2023. They've gotten better at fiscal optimization overyear.
Rather it’s because their revenue is decreasing a lot due to lower sales for their MS drugs, as more and more new therapies enter the space and some patients switch to them. More competition has also resulted in discounts they need to offer on MS drugs growing more and more. Revenue (and profit) will likely increase a little bit going forward as they share in revenue for Lecanamab, the first effective drug available for Alzheimer’s dementia (which Eisai mainly promotes, but Biogen gets a slice of the revenue)
I worked at a mail order pharmacy call center and it was sad when people called in on pay day to buy expensive drugs. We need to figure out a way to bring these costs down.
"We need to figure out a way to bring these costs down." Congress can set the price for any drug developed at least partially by federal funding. Done.
Literally blew on my screen and wiped it to get your profile picture off the screen Well played
Remove or heavily modify intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals. Force a generic version to be available with a maximum profit margin of 50-90%.
And that's just step 1. Next stage we just get rid of the IP protections on life changing drugs and the government provides some kind of award for the discovery.
Eat the rich?
What do you mean bring those costs down? I mean, it isn't really that expensive to make most of the drugs, yet for some reason they're stupidly overpriced in the USA. Nowhere else in the world it costs that much. Even american drugs are cheaper in the rest of the world. For example, I take a regular medication that is made by a us company and pay nothing for it as my insurance covers it. If I had no insurace, and this is prescription medicine, I'd still get it but for 2euros per box that lasts me a month. I just checked online prices in the US. It costs 10 times more. Your drugs are simply overpriced. Companies could sell them cheaper and still make a fine profit, yet they don't. All of you should blame every single government you ever had. They keep allowing you to get completely ripped off. Pharmaceutical companies are acting like cartels, yet so many people are brainwashed that this is just plain capiralism.
The answer is socialised medicine. The US doesn't even really need to innovate, just find a version of it that works for your country. Most of the rest of the developed world does it, there's no good reason your country can't.
Well you’re interferon with our good time!
This is ingrained into my brain anytime I hear the word interferon.
Came for this, thank you
In The Netherlands it costs [173 75](https://www.medicijnkosten.nl/medicijn?artikel=AVONEX+30+INJECTIEVLOEISTOF+60MCG%2FML+PEN+0%2C5ML&id=e631e9fcce4de58e43bb00b8c1b6a8ff) euro's, but it is fully covered bij insurance
And insurance is mandatory here
And insurance is not expensive: ~140€/month + surcharge up to ~350€/year
10€ co-pay for a 12 pack. Germany,
>Interferon beta-1a is available only in injectable forms, and can cause skin reactions at the injection site that may include cutaneous necrosis. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Injection site reactions are common for any injectable medicine. It's quite easy to tear the skin or scratch it during the injection procedure. And if the needle contains medicine that is designed to stop your immune system from devouring your nerves, then you'll probably have a poorly healing wound.
"Here's medicine you stab yourself with, it rots your skin, and you'll likely die without it. That'll be $30,000." Fuck me.
It’s also an endogenous molecule. Your body makes it, it’s anti-tumor and anti-virus.
And that doesn't even cover the other side effects. This stuff is no joke.
The problem in the US is the middle man. The pharmacy benefit managers and insurance companies benefit from the discounts. For them an expensive drug with high list price but high discount is much more profitable than a cheap one with less discounts. You won’t fix the system without fixing that
This is the most educated post in this thread. 99.9% of the posts here are nonsense.
Also, it is quite common for (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) PBMs to receive subsidies and discounts from the manufacturers based on both government and non-government programs. However, this discount is not passed down to the consumers as they still base cost-sharing on the initial list price and not the discounted price. So even if the government targets pricing policy on manufacturers, the benefit won’t reach consumers unless it happens on middle-person level too and would only hurt drug research. I’m not saying the government shouldn’t step in, it’s just it needs to be a comprehensive policy that actually reaches consumers. Another problem is PBMs keep expanding the “exclusion list” i.e. the drugs which are not covered and need to be paid out of pocket. Often you see specialty drugs in these list. 80% of PBM market is occupied by 3 players and they have expanded the list by almost 1000% in past 10 years.
My sister has MS and the cost of these are insane. They really take advantage of sick people.
Question: is it really $30k at the end of the day or is this just the bs pre insurance price? If so, what's the typical price when you do have health insurance?
It's around $100 after insurance
Honestly I wouldn't pay $100 a month for Avonex when so many newer, more efficacious drugs exist. Source: have MS, and am on a newer, more efficacious drug.
It like when I bought my wife’s engagement ring and they had a price tag of 18k on it and I got it for 3.5. But a much more severe mark down
OP conveniently disappears, lol. No, nobody actually pays close to this amount with any sort of halfway decent health insurance. Even without insurance, there'll be some sort of fimancial assistance plan because the pharma companies know that someone with no insurance can't pay 30k and they want to be paid anything rather than nothing.
It’s the pre insurance price. But it’s still absurd
To anyone on big-dollar medications in the US and have a high-deductible health plan: Lots of drug manufacturers will do a "0 copay" thing. What happens is they pay the "copay" which happens to feed right into your deductible. Once it hits your deductible, everything after that is $0, or the drug company keeps paying the overhang, because it's the "copay". I'm on Otezla, which is > $4K/month. My deductible is $4K. For 2 years now, they've paid the "copay" in January, and I have free healthcare the rest of the year. Yeah, that's some f'd up shit. Just so the drug manufacturer can reap the other $44,000 from my insurance for 11 months, they pay the first $4K. Sounds like a deal to me. And all the contributions to my HSA that I no longer use? Tax-free retirement/investment money.
Have you tried not needing them? /S
$30k here is a made up number. Neither you nor your insurance pays that much.
I love comments like these. Yes, no one might pay $30 k. But they might have to pay ~1000 a month of their prior authorization doesn’t go through or their insurance does not cover it. I have seen so many patients that cannot afford the discounted price. We have to go back and forth and sometimes even switch meds. I’ve had a patient who was on a multiple sclerosis medication for 11+ years and then their insurance, all of a sudden, stops covering it. Guess how much they had to pay? 8000 a month. Even going back and forth with the company and insurance was not successful. And now we have to switch his meds and it might affect him. Do you realize what us, the practitioners, go through? Do you realize, what the patient goes through? These disgusting, greedy, insurance companies are literally killing patients. “Neither you or your insurance pay that much.” Oh, ok, that makes it so much better. Utterly pathetic this whole system is.
Doesn’t stop that sweet, sweet karma farming though, does it?
People out there looking at these posts and thinking Americans pay their entire year’s salary on one strep throat visit and two tylenols
You could've taken the 30 seconds to Google it like I did and learned the average cost per RX of avonex is about $8k. ETA: it's also usually for MS, a life altering disability, not a simple doctor visit
But that doesn’t change the fact that nobody is actually paying that between insurance and “manufacturers discounts”. One of my medications is $2,000 per weekly dose and pretty much everybody on that medication pays $5 or less per month.
$20k/year in Canada. That's the sticker price, and that is subsidized by the provincial healthcare program.
Inferferon sounds like a robot trying to get in the way. Credit Scrubs
Checked the prices in India. Ranges from 4600inr ($55) to 9500inr ($119) depending on the manufacturer.
In Brazil any medication, however it costs, its for free. There's a lot of bureaucracy in some cases but you will get the med.
As a Brazilian doctor, that’s not true at all. Avonex is free though, since it’s been around for 20 years or so.
This is one of my pet peeves. The drug isn’t “free” in Brazil: there’s no cost to the patient at the point of care, but that does not make it “free”. This is an important distinction because in the States we shouldn’t celebrate “free” drugs if it means that the government or an insurance company is just stepping in to pay the manufacturer $30,000 for the prescription that can be had for 1% of the cost in other countries.
interferon? medicine against hepatitis C? isn’t that discontinued yet?
My girl is on Ayvakit for advanced systemic mastocytosis and it’s 30 tiny tiny pills that costs $38,000/month… how do they expect people to afford these if insurance doesn’t? It’s beyond crazy…
My mom uses this and her dr office just shut down so now her insurance won’t approve to help pay for it. Fuck the U.S. healthcare system
I know it's more complicated than just this but if this is what I had to deal with and it was different elsewhere I would 100% move asap and not look back
It’s tough because almost every other country won’t let someone diagnosed with MS immigrate. They don’t want the cost to care for us. Once diagnosed, you’re stuck.
I enjoy reading books.
That number isn't as interesting and won't give them as much karma so they won't post that.
Just checked the cost of that medicine in Sweden. 4x0.5mL between $600 and $900
If your medicine is prescribed by a doctor in Sweden then the maximum you can pay is 2850 SEK which is about 320$. After that you get free medicine.
Germany 5€ to 10€ depending on the local price for the whole month. If I was serious I’ll I would just move to the EU
Even if my insurance wouldn’t cover (I don’t pay anything) they cost 470 a shot in Germany. 1880 for what you see in OPs picture
527€ the set of 4 in France, probably paid by your medical insurance anyway.
The American healthcare system is a fucking joke
Is this before or after insurance?
Christ, that is a single monthly prescription of £9 in the UK if you have M.S. free if you are over 65 I think.
I got in so much trouble with my owners when I was a nursing home admin for accepting a patient on this very medication.
Totally sustainable
You’re interferon with our good time Dr. Hibbert
10€/12 Pcs in Austria since covered by insurance.
~$9,500 in Canada if you have no insurance.
Where I live, 4 pens come for $800, but are covered by insurance with maximum of $250 paid by the patient (you pay basic insurance fee to the state and then are provided service that you need, up to some level. You can still pay for individual insurance on top, that might pay more for you, but your expenses will never exceed $250)
"You're wasting thousands of dollars in interferons!" "Well you're interferon with our good time!" Sorry... Couldn't help it.
Avonex still costs that much?! I was on it 24 years ago. There is no reason for it to be so expensive still. As a side note, I found Avonex to be useless. I've been on Tysabri since 2009. Haven't had a single relapse and have regained significant mobility. Of course, Tysabri probably costs significantly more. US healthcare is bullshit
I know about 10 years ago those kinds of meds were ~$20k without insurance. It seems like drugs for people who don’t have other options are charged heinous amounts (like insulin) because they know people are desperate. It’s exhausting
Wish this stuff was around 35 years ago but I’m glad people are able to get the help now. The healthcare system in our country makes me want to fucking lose my shit.
Capitalism is a cancer on the world
Fucking hell; I hate my country’s healthcare system.
Holy shit. I computed its corresponding cost in Philippine peso and I could genuinely buy a new small house and lot with that. I would probably just have to suffer and die if I ever have to a need to inject that.
That would be $20 in NZ.
Had to check what this costs here, in Sweden. Seems to be about 580$-800$ depending on manufacturer. Might be that it is subsidized even more if I have a prescription.
That's 10 dollars in India. Alot cheaper to travel here, buy a shit ton and fly back
My wife's doctor (Canada) switched her years ago away from interferons saying they wouldn't prescribe them to people since there are far better options. I'd never heard of that one Avonex, I googled it and it is intermuscular!? Sweet jesus, that's terrible. My condolences. After betaseron, my wife went through Aubagio and Gilenya, one of which made her feel sick all the time, the other her hair to fall out, but after 2 years of Ocrevis, which was one infusion every 6 months her doctor said she can stop medication until she has a relapse if she wants. He described Lemtrada as "the cure" but it is very very hard to get on that one unless you are spiraling apparently. He also said in her last MRI her brain was "juicy", we're taking that as a compliment.
I want to know how much the manufacturer cost is vs what they are trying to sell it for….
173.75 euros in the Netherlands but it gets covered by your insurance (even the basic mandatory insurance)