Wearing a revolutionary-era tricorn hat, doctor Mathew Maurer stood at a lectern in front of an audience of fellow cardiologists in Philadelphia, decrying the price of a new medication that had the potential to help many of his heart-failure patients.
The drug, Pfizer Inc.’s tafamidis, cost $651 a day, Maurer told them—equal to a patient’s food budget for a month. Drugs don’t work if people can’t afford to take them, he said, and the pharmaceutical company’s $225,000-a-year price was well out of bounds.
Maurer isn’t just any critic. A professor at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, he worked closely with Pfizer to develop the breakthrough drug. He was the lead author on a pivotal, company-funded scientific study that got tafamidis approved earlier this year.
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Maurer and collaborators released a cost-effectiveness analysis last week at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions meeting, concluding that tafamidis is only cost-effective with a more than 90% price reduction, or a price tag of $16,563.
At current prices, treating an estimated 120,000 individuals in the U.S. with tafamidis would “increase annual health-care spending by $32.3 billion,” the authors wrote.
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