Ocrevus Predicted to Be a Billion-dollar Blockbuster

Thanks for this article Ed. Having PPMS, I am grateful that we have Ocrevus as a treatment option. My third round is this month.

However it is disturbing to read the market research firm refer to us as the “MS market.”

I only hope ongoing research is dedicated to helping us “MS patients,” not focusing on sales figures to a target market.

When infusion centers are charging $65,000 per dose...no kidding. I am lucky I have insurance that pays the ridiculous price for this drug and I was able to have it for treatment. What is appalling is that so many other people have to suffer by not getting it due to insurance that will not cover the costs. I think the pharmaceutical industry needs to take a closer look at healing people rather than the $1 billion they're making off this drug. Kind of cheapens my thinking about them to be honest.

Money prevents cures. This is the perfect example. I am a patient with PPMS and several rounds of this drug did nothing. Glad they're going to make a billion off us so fast though. Drug prices in this country are astronomical. This so called less expensive wonder drug is rebranded rituxan with a small change to make it slightly different and my hospital infusion bills were close to $100,000 each 6 months. As long as so many people are making so much money off of drugs like this, there will be no interest in big pharma curing anything. Let's cross our fingers and hope someone smaller comes up with at least good treatment that isn't out for money. When's the last time anything was actually cured?

Didn't Rituxan come from Genentech? It is prescribed off label in it's generic form as Rituximab and is an effective treatment for early PPMS. Ocrevus may be safer than Rituxan but for a PPMS patient who has little to no choices the choice of Rituxan or Rituximab a decade ago might have made a difference.

As with so many issues, politics are inextricably bound to the matter of big pharma and the exorbitant prices charged for their high-tech treatments for difficult-to-treat health conditions.

A single payer health care model, such as is used in Medicare, would greatly reduce, or in some cases eliminate, the emphasis on profits that currently dominate so much of the forces that determine the cost and availability of treatments available to various patient populations.

And this is ESPECIALLY TRUE if the power to negotiate and regulate reimbursement costs were included as an integral component of the single payer health care system that would be developed to address the multiplicity of problems inherent in the for-profit system that is so deeply ingrained in American society.

Speaking of Politics, I was so digusted with the recent Congressman who as soon as he found out the MS drug he was backing, illegally pulled out of the company. And said he was helping MS patients that was why he was backing the company. What a crook he was hoping to reap the super high profits from the drug. What a disappointment to use our disease to make a profit and then lie about it.