Uh oh, the cost of PrEP might be going up!

Why is this being pushed so hard?

This will be a short post, but I share it because I remain dedicated to providing information about PrEP and its associated propaganda in as timely a manner as possible, in whatever manner I receive it. Moving forward, I may move to a “weekly roundup” of PrEP information, as there is a lot. (Let me know if that’s something you’d like.)

I came across the following article, warning that decreases in coverage for PrEP would cause people not to take advantage of this wondrous innovation of taking chemotherapy daily for a condition you don’t even have.

Out-of-pocket cost increase could put HIV prevention medications out of reach

Increasing patients’ out of pocket costs for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), medications, which have been shown to dramatically reduce the risk of HIV infection, could lead to a significant reduction in PrEP use and a rise in HIV infection rates, according to a new study co-led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It’s amazing to me that there are actually studies that investigate how the cost of HIV medication for people that don’t test positive for HIV affects its uptake by said people that don’t test positive for HIV. Or maybe it’s not.

However, an ongoing legal challenge (Braidwood Management, Inc. v. Becerra) may nullify that part of the ACA, allowing insurers to now require out-of-pocket costs for PrEP and other preventive therapies. Against this background, Doshi and her colleagues sought to gauge how out-of-pocket cost changes affect PrEP use.

We’ve discussed Braidwood vs. Becerra before. It basically boils down to a situation in which “some right wing Christian business owners” would like to be able to refuse to provide health insurance that might cover PrEP. As a libertarian, I think private business owners should be able to do what they want, and I’m totally fine if you disagree with me.

Based on their analyses, the researchers estimated that raising monthly patient out-of-pocket costs for PrEP from $0 to the $1-$10 category would nearly double the prescription abandonment rate (from 5.6 percent to 11.1 percent), while moving to the $101-$500 category the abandonment rate would be 34.7 percent. At the $500+ category, they estimated, the abandonment rate would be about 42.6 percent, nearly eight times the rate at the $0 level.

Does anyone else find the use of language such as “prescription abandonment rate” incredibly Orwellian? We need an entirely new branch of study dedicated to analyzing the deceptive, coercive language used around public health in general and HIV AIDS in particular. Who’s on board?

It’s interesting because these types of articles discuss the affordability of these drugs as an impediment to their access but they never mention the fact that someone is paying for them. The cost of Truvada is somewhere in the $2000 per month range, and Biktarvy is about $3500 per month. Do you really think the pharmaceutical companies are giving these away for free? Do we really want our tax dollars to fund PrEP? And perhaps the more important question: Is this really all about money, or is something more sinister going on?

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