By Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News
When a brand-name drug to help prevent premature births was approved last year, its $1,500-a-dose-price alarmed state and private sector insurance officials.
Many restricted use of the FDA-approved Makena in favor of $20- to $40-a-dose versions that had been made for years by pharmacies, saying that would give more women access to the treatment. Federal officials, sympathetic to such arguments, allowed the pharmacies to continue making the unapproved drugs.
But those decisions are now getting a second look following a deadly meningitis outbreak linked to a different pharmacy-made drug that has sickened hundreds of people and killed more than 25. No one has been reported injured by the pregnancy drug knockoffs. But the judgments made about Makena offer a window into the difficult tradeoffs between cost, safety and access sometimes confronted by policymakers and insurers at a time of growing angst over drug prices.
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