Drug makers AbbVie Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc. have once again opened a price war for claiming their respective stake in the hepatitis C drug market.
Both companies made the official announcement for staging price war against each other despite making a statement in 2014 that they have no intentions to engage in any price battle scenario in 2015.
According to the reports, the two companies are wooing their consumers and health insurance providers with consistent discounts on their respective products across the United States.
Anthem Inc, one of the most important health insurance providers, said it has successfully completed an agreement with one of the two firms. Matching their footsteps, several other insurance firms also entered similar exclusive deals with the drug companies as well.
Gilead’s first hepatitis C drug Sovaldi was priced at USD 84,000 for a 12 week course, while Gilead’s Harvoni was priced at nearly USD 95,000 for the same course duration. These despicable prices made the insurers, health care providers and lawmakers condemn the decision of these drug makers for a very long time.
In 2013, Gilead President John Milligan had said that the company changes the prices of its drugs only on rare occasions as he never preferred taking risk on creating cheaper and less effective drugs in order to make them cost efficient.
AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez had shared similar sentiments in April last year. But despite the huge claims, both companies eventually entered into the price war.
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