Medicaid spending on hepatitis C treatments escalated last year, primarily due to Gilead Sciences' Sovaldi, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data found that state Medicaid programs spent $1.33 billion on hepatitis C therapies through the third quarter of 2014. That's almost as much as the states spent in the previous three years combined.
The main contributor to the growth was Gilead's Sovaldi, a highly effective therapy that has a wholesale cost of $84,000 per person over the course of treatment, or $1,000 per pill, according to the report.
Although most state Medicaid programs restricted access to Sovaldi, states still spent $1.08 billion on Sovaldi in the first three quarters of 2014, which represents 82 percent of all hepatitis C drug spending, according to the data analyzed by The Wall Street Journal, which does not include rebates.
Data shows that Texas, which has the country's third-largest Medicaid population, was the only state that did not spend any money on Sovaldi in the first nine months of 2014, while New York was the biggest spender on the drug during that time period.
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