NYT:Maker of Heart Drug Intended for Blacks Bases Price on Patients Wealth

[Sgent]

The company that recently broke new ground by winning federal approval for the first drug intended for African-Americans could now be entering new territory with a controversial pricing system for the medicine.

The maker, NitroMed, has set the price of its heart-failure drug BiDil at $1.80 a pill, significantly higher than what analysts had expected and nearly twice as much as some other heart-failure treatments. Depending on the dosage, that would make the cost of taking BiDil at least $5.40 and maybe as much as $10.80 a day.

<snip>

NitroMed says as many as 750,000 black Americans suffer from heart failure and are candidates for the drug. But the company has established an unusually generous charity program to go along with the drug's high price, meant to make it affordable to the 75,000 or so target patients the company estimates have no prescription drug insurance coverage.

Any patient without prescription drug coverage will be able to get BiDil for $25 a month. Poor patients without prescription drug coverage will get it free, the company said yesterday.

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NY Times

[Solon]

1. Sounds like a sound plan...

Don't know if it will hold up in court, but without Universal Health Care in this country, they have little choice, for far too many people, of any color are without medical insurance and need meds to stay alive.

Another little interesting side effect of this drug(pardon the pun), in states with "conscience clauses" will followers of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian(Aryan Nations, Christian Identity assholes) be able to refuse to dispense the drug?

[Bozita]

2. How much can we drain from you and still get you to return for a refill?

That's the formula.

Words cannot describe my feelings for big pharma.

[truthisfreedom]

3. interesting. uncommon.

has the appearances of progressive ideals... it's almost creepy.