Ver­tex's cys­tic fi­bro­sis drugs work, but they're too ex­pen­sive, ICER finds

Ear­li­er this month, Resh­ma Ke­wal­ra­mani took over the reins as Ver­tex Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ CEO — she will now be tasked with grap­pling with crit­i­cism from cost-ef­fec­tive­ness watch­dog ICER, which on Mon­day is­sued a re­port sug­gest­ing that de­spite the health gains of­fered by its suite of cys­tic fi­bro­sis drugs, their prices are far too high to be sus­tain­able for pa­tients and health care sys­tems.

“De­spite be­ing trans­for­ma­tive ther­a­pies, the prices set by the man­u­fac­tur­er – cost­ing many mil­lions of dol­lars over the life­time of an av­er­age pa­tient – are out of pro­por­tion to their sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits,” said David Rind, ICER’s chief med­ical of­fi­cer in a state­ment.

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