{"id":249694,"date":"2025-10-30T08:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T08:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/249694\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T08:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T08:28:14","slug":"why-an-old-multiple-sclerosis-drug-costs-more-than-ever-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/249694\/","title":{"rendered":"Why an Old Multiple Sclerosis Drug Costs More Than Ever in the US"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ArticleBodyText_articleBodyContent__17wqE typography_articleBody__3UcBa\" data-component=\"paragraph\">When Jean Kay started a brand-new multiple sclerosis treatment called Rebif in 2003, it cost $17,500 a year. That was pricey, but her insurance covered most of it, and the drug slowed the disease\u2019s progress, improving her life immeasurably. Since then, though, the price of Rebif has risen four times faster than the rate of inflation, to more than $140,000 annually\u2014with the share she\u2019s had to pay bouncing up and down over the years until 2024, when her insurer decided to stop covering it at all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleBodyText_articleBodyContent__17wqE typography_articleBody__3UcBa\" data-component=\"paragraph\">For decades, paying for treatment has influenced Kay\u2019s career choices, led her husband to move 600 miles away for a job with insurance, and chewed up countless hours tracking costs and payment options. Rebif\u2014an interferon, a class of medication first studied for MS in the 1970s and approved in the \u201990s\u2014is now the second-costliest treatment for the disease in the US. And Kay got this year\u2019s prescription covered only after a last-minute appeal to her Medicare drug plan provider, UnitedHealthcare. \u201cIt\u2019s just not right for them to raise the prices,\u201d says Kay, 70, a nurse who stopped working because of her disability in 2016. \u201cWhat justifies it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Jean Kay started a brand-new multiple sclerosis treatment called Rebif in 2003, it cost $17,500 a year.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[81435,49,48,151,23722,14208,91931,2971,3456,84,14211,135,377,82639,116803,4470],"class_list":["post-249694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-businessweek","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-career","tag-congressional-budget-office","tag-donald-john-trump","tag-drug-companies","tag-drugs","tag-europe","tag-health","tag-industries","tag-inflation","tag-medication","tag-merck-co","tag-national-multiple-sclerosis","tag-pfizer-inc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}