Bluebird CEO talks pricing
One-time, life-saving gene therapies have fantastic potential — but only if patients, or at least their insurers, can actually pay for them. Bluebird Bio CEO Nick Leschly opines that the payment problem is exacerbated by the current “runaway train model of modern medicine: You board, you ride, and you pay forever,” he writes.
Bluebird has been considering some unique approaches — including risk-sharing, with payments made only if the drug works. The company has also proposed that the total lifetime cost per patient is capped at five years, even if benefits are lifelong. That still would allow Bluebird to, say, receive about $1.7 million for its beta thalassemia gene therapy Zynteglo — Leschly admits it’s a large sum — but would allow a patient to stop paying for what was once a chronic, lifelong condition once it’s cured.
Bluebird has been considering some unique approaches — including risk-sharing, with payments made only if the drug works. The company has also proposed that the total lifetime cost per patient is capped at five years, even if benefits are lifelong. That still would allow Bluebird to, say, receive about $1.7 million for its beta thalassemia gene therapy Zynteglo — Leschly admits it’s a large sum — but would allow a patient to stop paying for what was once a chronic, lifelong condition once it’s cured.
It's not just Leschly considering this issue: A new Nature Medicine piece suggests that benefit corporations might be the right route to affordable gene therapy. The idea is that drug makers could leverage the social impact brought on through B-corp status in their performance indicators.
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