The price of the lifesaving Covid-19 antiviral medication Paxlovid will more than double as the United States transitions out of the emergency phase of the pandemic, drugmaker Pfizer said Wednesday.
The list price, before insurance, will be $1,390 for a five-day course, Pfizer said in a statement. That’s 2.6 times higher than the $530-per-course price paid by the US government, which provided Paxlovid free to patients during the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal first reported the new price.
People with Medicare or Medicaid or who are uninsured will be able to get Paxlovid for free through 2024 via a patient assistance program, the US Department of Health and Human Services said last week. Pfizer said that program will extend through 2028 for patients who are uninsured or “underinsured.”
Covid-19 vaccines also increased in price as they went through a similar transition to a commercial market, rising about fourfold to between $115 to $130 per dose. One financial analyst had estimated a potentially similar increase, of three to five times, for Paxlovid, which would have brought its list price as high as $2,500.
“Hard to call it ‘good news’ ” that the increase was instead only 2.6 times, Topol wrote in an email to CNN on Wednesday. He and other physicians had warned that an increase in Paxlovid’s price would create hurdles for people to get the drug.
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