ViiV Healthcare to provide additional cost savings to cash-strapped ADAPs

Following ongoing advocacy campaigns spearheaded by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) that targeted several of the largest AIDS drug companies over their pricing and rebate policies for the nation's AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs), the federally funded, state run programs that supply lifesaving AIDS drugs to low-income Americans in need, AHF is pleased to report that yet another drug company: ViiV Healthcare, a new drug company formed in a partnership between GSK and Pfizer, has announced an agreement that will provide additional cost savings to cash-strapped ADAPs nationwide. The agreement was reached between ViiV and the ADAP Crisis Task Force (ACTF) of the National Alliance of State & Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD). ViiV Healthcare, which markets the AIDS drug Selzentry (maraviroc, first introduced by Pfizer in August 2007) and the commonly prescribed anti-retroviral treatments Combivir and Trizivir, joins Merck and Company, Johnson & Johnson's Tibotec Therapeutics and Abbott Labs among the ranks of AIDS drug manufacturers that have recently offered significant price cuts, freezes, price rebate adjustments and other concessions on the pricing of their lifesaving AIDS medications to ADAP.

“The limited funding available for ADAP is being exhausted by the high cost of many overpriced AIDS drugs. We thank those companies such as Merck, Tibotec and ViiV for doing the right thing and taking steps to improve access and urge others such as Gilead and BMS to follow suit.”

"We are pleased that ViiV Healthcare is joining the ranks of AIDS drug companies offering price concessions that will make lifesaving drugs far more affordable and accessible to the nation's AIDS Drug Assistance Programs and the thousands of people with HIV/AIDS who rely on the lifeline these programs provide around the country," said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "Just one month ago, we lauded Merck for its offer to double its ADAP rebates, freeze the price of its key AIDS drug and start paying its ADAP drug discount rebates upfront to cash-strapped states—an industry first. At the time, we urged other drug companies to quickly follow Merck's lead. Since then, Tibotec, the maker of the protease inhibitor Prezista also announced cost containment concessions for ADAPs. Over the past two years, in the wake of growing crises facing many of our nation's ADAPs, AHF stepped up its AIDS drug pricing advocacy, targeting several of these drug companies with protests, advertising and email campaigns, lobbying huge investment funds such as CalPERS and CalSTRS to look into the issue. We now urge other remaining drug companies, including BMS and Gilead Sciences, to offer similar concessions and compromises on pricing and drug rebates."

While many states are facing massive budget shortfalls and are seeking to cut services, more than twelve have also gone as far as to institute patient waiting lists to access ADAP services, including Florida—with the nation's third highest case HIV/AIDS load—which instituted an ADAP waiting list starting June 1^st.