Aduhelm to Boost Prescription Drug Spending Over $73B by 2028

Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, is expected to increase prescription drug spending and the national health expenditure more than $73 billion by 2028, according to a new Altarum report.

By the mid 2020’s, Aduhelm may constitute more than 1 percent of all national health spending. Additionally, the drug is expected to increase non-retail drug spending by more than 25 percent and total prescription drug spending by over 8 percent. 

Researchers assumed Aduhelm’s target population as the one million patients currently representing the estimated population with mild Alzheimer’s disease.

If the researchers were to double uptake of the drug to 2 million people, that would double the financial impact, increasing the national health expenditure to nearly 2.5 percent and non-retail drug spending to over 50 percent. 

Notably, the projections in the report do not account for the COVID-19 pandemic. According to researchers, Aduhelm data through April of this year shows decline and recovery in spending on healthcare services, but less impact on growth in retail drug spending.

Ultimately, this could lower the ratio of non-retail to retail drug spending in 2020 and 2021.

“While our estimates employ data and assumptions that are highly uncertain, they provide order-of-magnitude estimates of the likely impact of Aduhelm use on health spending,” researchers said in the report. 

“These estimates indicate that Aduhelm prescribing will result in a significant increase in expenditures for non-retail prescription drug spending, all prescription drug spending, and NHE,” they continued.

At the beginning of June, FDA officially approved Aduhelm, marking the first Alzheimer’s drug approval in nearly 20 years and the first one to address cognitive decline in patients with the illness. 

The drug, administered through intravenous infusion, comes with an annual cost of $56,000 per patient. The price is a non-retail expenditure that will mainly affect Medicare Part B, researchers explained. 

The high price tag raises serious concern for both patients and payers. Experts believe that insurers will likely consider the financial burden of long-term care of Alzheimer’s patients, including extensive monitoring and increasingly complex medical care. 
Michel Vounatos, Biogen’s CEO, told CNBC that the price of Aduhelm is “fair” and will not increase in the next four years.