Medicare finally decided how to deal with CAR-T

After months of controversial deliberation, the federal agency that runs Medicare has issued rules on how it will pay for CAR-T cancer therapies.

As STAT's Nicholas Florko reports, the big takeaway is that Medicare will shell out for the costly treatment so long as hospitals comply with some FDA-mandated safety regulations, even if the CAR-T in question is used for cancers not covered by the official label.

That's important for hospitals, which have long complained that the lack of a Medicare directive has left them subsidizing the cost of CAR-T, which can reach beyond $400,000 for a single patient. Whether it matters to Gilead Sciences and Novartis, the two companies with approved CAR-T products, is another story.

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