Who will pay for CRISPR?
The ruckus over the CRISPR gene-editing system hides a dark reality: its high cost may make it unaffordable and questions remain whether most insurance companies will pay for it.
As CRISPR begins to move forward in clinical trials, there are some signals about how it may — or may not — be received commercially. Other types of gene therapies carry a price tag that is likely to induce sticker shock. If adopted, these therapies will add striking new cost burdens to our health care system.
“The cost isn’t coming down,” said Mark Trusheim, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s NEW Drug Development Paradigms, a think tank working on the problem of how we will pay for expensive new drugs. “Companies will say, ‘We are developing these medicines, just pay us’; insurers will say, ‘We can’t afford it.'”
A few years ago, Dutch drug company uniQure set up a plant in Lexington, Mass., to make a gene therapy called Glybera, at. It used viruses to slip copies of a gene into human cells to restore an enzyme needed to break down fats. The cost? $1.4 million per patient. The company eventually abandoned its bid to bring Glybera to the U.S. and, after having in Germany, from European markets, rendering it a commercial failure.
