Antivenom medicine comes at high price

A scorpion antivenom approved by the U.S. government in August comes with a high financial burden for victims from scorpion stings, doctors say. Hospitals are billing as much as $12,467 per vial of the antivenom intended to help children, the elderly and others quickly recover from severe reactions to scorpion stings. With a typical treatment requiring three to five vials to counteract the venomous sting, hospital bills for patients and their insurance companies can exceed $62,000, The Arizona Republic reported Sunday. While the drug has been used for years in Mexico at a fraction of the U.S. price, it is a classic example of why rare drugs can be so expensive in the United States, health experts said. "The price is ridiculously high," said Dr. Alejandro Alagon, a scientist who advises Instituto Bioclon of Mexico, which makes the drug, explaining each link in the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain from the Mexican factory to Arizona patients raises the price. "The problem right now is that it's a new drug. Third-party payers (insurance companies) are not paying for it, and the patients are getting stuck with the bill," Brian Tiffany, an emergency-medicine doctor, said. If patients with severe reactions decide to skip the drug, he said, they might require time in the hospital's intensive-care unit, which is also expensive. "I can put a (patient) in the emergency room with all that wasted time and effort, or I can give them an incredibly expensive drug," Tiffany said. "It is a horrible position to put you (the patient) in."