Newly Approved Drugs In US Command Over $200,000 On An Average

The median annual price of 17 new drugs approved by the FDA since July 2022 reached $193,900, down from $257,000 in 1H of 2022. For the full year 2022, the median price was $222,003.
Citing a study published by JAMA, Reuters analysis found that in 2021, the median annual price was $180,000 for the 30 drugs first marketed through mid-July.
The analysis includes three recently approved gene therapies, two from Bluebird bio Inc BLUE and one from uniQure N.V. QURE.
Bluebird's Zynteglo was priced at $2.8 million, and Skysona had a wholesale cost of $3.0 million.
uniQure's Hemgenix's expected price of $3.5 million is higher than the brokerage's estimated $1.9 million.
"I don't see anything changing that trend," Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, told Reuters. Kesselheim says Congress will eventually have to address excessively high launch prices.
The findings follow a recent analysis from U.S. Democratic Representative Katie Porter, which found that the annual price of a newly-launched cancer drug in the U.S. was $283,000 in 2021, up 53% from 2017.
Drugmakers also stress that they do not determine what U.S. patients are paying. Many offer savings cards and other programs to reduce out-of-pocket costs.
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