Express Scripts Raises Pressure on Gilead for Drug Price
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Express Scripts Holding Co., a pharmacy benefit manager that handles more than 1 billion prescriptions a year in the U.S., is ratcheting up its effort to force Gilead Sciences Inc. to cut the $84,000 price of its new hepatitis C pill Sovaldi.
Express Scripts plans to ask clients, composed of national employers, health insurance plans and government agencies, to join a coalition that would stop using Sovaldi once a rival medicine is approved for the U.S., expected next year, said Steven Miller, chief medical officer of the St. Louis-based company. Express Scripts said in December it may block reimbursement for Foster City, California-based Gilead’s pill once other new hepatitis C therapies are on the market.