Some private insurers are balking at paying for the first drug fully approved to slow mental decline in Alzheimer's patients.
Insurers selling coverage in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New York, among other states, told The Associated Press they won’t cover Leqembi with insurance offered on the individual market and through employers because they still see the $26,000-a-year drug as experimental., which will wind up covering most patients who take the drug.
, according to the Japanese drugmaker Eisai, which developed the drug and is co-marketing it with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Biogen Inc. coverage in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, which has about 1.8 million commercial customers; and Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross.
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