Gene Therapy Medications Hit Record High Pricetags of More Than $2 Million

and four new drugs approved by U. S. And european regulators come with record setting price tags. Yes over $2 million per dose. Most of the drugs are gene therapies which involve injecting functional genes into patients with genetic disorders. These disorders are often and rare and the treatments can be designed to work in a single dose. So the companies behind these drugs argue that while the costs are high the overall burden should be low. Drugmakers also argue that eliminating these conditions which include neurological blood or muscle wasting diseases would produce an overall savings for the system. But insurers are pushing back, arguing that as more of these gene therapies enter the market premiums will have to go up in order to cover the multimillion dollar payouts. Hannah, you know obviously this is just jaw dropping number here is incredible. Some advocates for drug ethics who track this type of conversation say that yes while these are revolutionary drugs a lot of work went into creating them. The prices on these are only fair If you think that the current prices of drugs in the us are fair because as we know the US drug for prices for drugs far outstrips any other nation. That's why so many seniors actually take bus trips to Canada and get medication from other parts of the country. The parts of the world. I think what's so disturbing here is during COVID-19 if there is one thing we learned within our healthcare system is the discrepancy between certain communities. How can those lower earning communities afford these kind of lifesaving medications. And now it feels like the space has gotten even bigger with these prices that we're seeing that are reaching millions of dollars for medication. Like again, like you mentioned Chloe, you can get a lot cheaper in different parts of the world and you can look to insurance companies. But what they're pushing back and saying is that they're designed to handle payouts over an extended period of time. They're not designed to handle a big book, $2 million 10 years. We don't know if this is a once in a lifetime treatment quite yet. Yeah. Such good points.