By Robert Langreth and Caroline Chen, BLOOMBERG NEWS JANUARY 05, 2015,
Gilead Sciences Inc. was chosen over AbbVie Inc. as the main provider of hepatitis C medicine for patients covered through CVS Health Corp., intensifying a rivalry to treat patients with pills that cost $1,000 or more a day.
Gilead’s Harvoni and Sovaldi will be the exclusive drugs for CVS’s standard commercial list of covered medicine, as well as its list for health-care exchanges, Medicare Part D and Medicaid, the benefits manager said today in an e-mail.
“Our goal was to create the lowest net-cost solution for the entire population of patients with all genotypes of hepatitis C,” CVS said. The company didn’t say whether it negotiated a special price for Gilead’s drugs.
The win at CVS helps Gilead recover from a loss to AbbVie at Express Scripts Holding Co., the biggest US drug-benefits manager, which chose last month to favor Viekira Pak in many cases. AbbVie offered an unspecified discount to garner support from Express Scripts, to the dismay of biotech investors who have bet on the industry’s ability to maintain high prices.