Hepatitis C Treatment Drug Sovaldi Could Reach $5 Billion in Sales in United States Alone

Gilead Sciences' hepatitis C drug costs patients $1,000 a day. The drug, Sovaldi, was recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and could amass the highest sales number for any first-year drug.

The drug's price for a 12-week treatment is $84,000, which is going to affect many insurers. Analysts project that the high sales of the expensive Sovaldi will cost the ten largest publicly traded insurers almost $800 million more for hepatitis C treatments compared to last year.

Hepatitis C is the only form of hepatitis that has yet to have a vaccine. The contagious liver disease can last a few weeks or become a lifelong ailment and is primarily transmitted through contact with the blood of an infected person. Cases include "acute" hepatitis and "chronic" hepatitis: Acute cases are short-term, but they often lead to chronic infections. Chronic cases are long-term and lead to detrimental liver issues, such as cirrhosis or cancer.

About 3.2 million people in the U.S. have chronic hepatitis C and about 15,000 people die from the disease each year. Those in a life-threatening hepatitis C situation can potentially contribute $1.2 billion through purchasing the 12-week Sovaldi treatment plan. And that's only a very small portion of the hepatitis C population.

"If you've got a patient who is advanced and has liver disease and is about to get a liver transplant, it makes sense to give treatment," said J. Mario Molina, the CEO of Molina Healthcare Inc. "What do we do about everybody else? If everyone in the U.S. with hepatitis C were treated with Sovaldi at its list price, it would cost $227 billion compared with the estimated $260 billion spent a year in the country for all drugs," he added in this Forbes article.

Sovaldi is projected to cure 90% of its targeted hepatitis C patients who are in danger of developing more serious liver complications. And since it has no competition, it's going to be extremely costly for insurers because it will to be difficult for them to deny coverage if the drug is both the only option and highly effective.

To read more about Sovaldi and its sales projections, visit this Wall Street Journal article.