Medicare is willing to reevaluate its coverage of Alzheimer’s drugs in light of a new therapy, called lecanemab, that has shown potentially more promising patient data than its controversial predecessor, Aduhelm, according to the official who oversees the program.
“I can’t speak to any specifics, but just to say that our door is really open,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Thursday at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit when asked about how the agency will approach lecanemab. “We will look at it as new data comes.”
This past April, Medicare finalized a coverage policy in which it would only pay for Aduhelm if patients were enrolled in a clinical trial. Aduhelm’s manufacturer, Biogen, originally priced the drug at $56,000 per year before cutting that figure in half.
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