A fellow listmember on the ACOR MM list has been in touch with Celgene quite a bit, to get her husband on the new drug, Revlimid. Those of us in the trials get the drug at no cost to ourselves, but when it’s approved for use with MM, we’ll have to pay (one way or another). I’m going to start an email campaign to let the media know about this. So far, I’ve only written to CNN and had no response. I know. I’m expecting too much.
From K.M.:
Revlimid is available to MM patients off-label from pharmacies approved
by Celgene. Dave got his from Biologics in NC last month and I think
that the press release was adding another pharmacy to their list (maybe a
total of 3 now.) The problem is that they will charge your insurance (or
you if your insurance won’t pay) $15,000/month for the drug. This is
because each pill costs about $250 and they only have 5 mg and 10 mg
pills available commercially. (One Celgene manager told me that they
will have 25mg pills available when revlimid is approved for MM since
that is the standard MM dosage, so it will “only” be $250/day instead of
$750/day.) You may still be able to get the drug for free from the
Expanded Access Program which puts you in a clinical trial. Dave starts
on the EAP this week after having our insurance pay $15,000 for revlimid
last month. We, or our insurance co., won’t be paying anything for the
drug, but he has to adhere to the protocol of the trial.
I see Brrreeeport is still going strong.