Price tag for a questionable Alzheimer’s treatment: $109,000 per patient, per year. Unclear yet: For how many years?

The real costs of the new Alzheimer’s drug, Leqem­bi — and why tax­pay­ers will foot much of the bill (CBS News):

The first drug pur­port­ing to slow the advance of Alzheimer’s dis­ease is like­ly to cost the U.S. health care sys­tem bil­lions annu­al­ly even as it remains out of reach for many of the low­er-income seniors most like­ly to suf­fer from dementia.

Medicare and Med­ic­aid patients will make up 92% of the mar­ket for lecanemab, accord­ing to Eisai Co., which sells the drug under the brand name Leqem­bi. In addi­tion to the com­pa­ny’s $26,500 annu­al price tag for the drug, treat­ment could cost U.S. tax­pay­ers $82,500 per patient per year, on aver­age, for genet­ic tests and fre­quent brain scans, safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing, and oth­er care, accord­ing to esti­mates from the Insti­tute for Clin­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Review, or ICER.

… To qual­i­fy for Leqem­bi, patients must under­go a PET scan that looks for amy­loid plaques, the pro­tein clumps that clog the brains of many Alzheimer’s patients. About 1 in 5 patients who took Leqem­bi in the major clin­i­cal test of the drug devel­oped brain hem­or­rhag­ing or swelling, a risk that requires those tak­ing the drug to under­go fre­quent med­ical check­ups and brain scans called MRIs … Out­stand­ing doubts about Leqem­bi and relat­ed drugs have giv­en urgency to efforts to mon­i­tor patient expe­ri­ences. CMS is requir­ing Leqem­bi patients to be entered into a reg­istry that tracks their out­comes … In a let­ter to CMS on July 27, a group of pol­i­cy experts said CMS should ensure that any and all Leqem­bi reg­istries cre­ate and share data detailed enough for researchers and FDA safe­ty teams to obtain a clear pic­ture of the drug’s real-world profile.

News in Context:

• Should doc­tors pre­scribe lecanemab (Leqem­bi) to women? The answer, giv­en avail­able evi­dence, is prob­a­bly No
• Grow­ing con­tro­ver­sy over role of FDA and Medicare in pro­mot­ing anti-amy­loid drugs giv­en lim­it­ed ben­e­fit, high cost, severe side-effects