Alzheimer’s Disease | Access and Reimbursement | US | 2016
Although the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) treatment paradigm is stable and most current treatments in the United States are generically available, several new therapies for AD, including the first disease-modifying therapies (DMTs), novel procognitive symptomatic therapies, and behavioral therapies (e.g., for agitation), could launch in the next ten years. We expect that AD patients, their caregivers, and physicians would welcome any agent that is judged acceptably safe, reasonably well tolerated, and meaningfully effective, given the desperate need for more treatment options to optimize patients’ outcomes and, on balance, improve their quality of life. However, many questions remain about payers’ reactions to the coming influx of what we expect to be high-priced new brands and the strategies they will use to contain drug spend as the surging AD population threatens to push swelling Medicare costs even higher.
