(Reuters) - Express Scripts Holding Co (ESRX.O) built a multi-billion enterprise pressuring drug companies to lower their prices for U.S. patients. Now it is quietly building a side business: getting paid to help drug companies dispense a new generation of high-priced drugs.
FILE PHOTO: Express Scripts Chief Medical Officer Steve Miller poses for a portrait in the Manhattan borough of New York January 22, 2015. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
Express Scripts is in talks with biotechnology companies Biomarin Pharmaceutical Inc (BMRN.O), Spark Therapeutics Inc (ONCE.O) and Bluebird Bio Inc (BLUE.O) to have its specialty pharmaceutical business exclusively distribute their new hemophilia therapies when they are expected to become available in 2019 and 2020, Chief Medical Officer Steve Miller told Reuters in an interview.
Biomarin, Spark and Bluebird confirmed to Reuters that they were speaking to a payers - a group generally defined as pharmacy benefit managers, health plans and government agencies
- about pricing models for future therapies. Analysts project those drugs could top $1 million to $1.5 million in price.
Rather than rail against the drugs’ expected high prices, Miller echoes the familiar drug company argument that the potentially curative therapies will likely be worth the high cost if they supplant the hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual medical costs to treat ailments such as hemophilia, which affects about 20,000 people in the United States alone.
“Even if they charge $1 million, that’s a great deal,” Miller said. “So there are going to be some gene therapies where it is very clear that everyone who has that disease should get it.”
By working closely with biotech companies, Miller says it can help their expensive therapies succeed commercially. To manage any potential conflicts of interest, he
