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Biotech / Medical : GelTex Pharmaceuticals (GELX)
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To: ADEL 7 who wrote (93)10/28/1998 6:16:00 PM
From: Robert L. Ray  Read Replies (1) of 127
 
Calcium Carbonate may only be $150 per year but Phoslo is around $600 per year. Try as I may I've been unable to find firm numbers on the percent of patients who take Phoslo vs. Calcium Carbonate, but for sure I've never seen it mentioned that Phoslo is only used on a subset of patients who are hypercalcemic. So I don't believe Renagel will be limited to a subset of patients either because although it costs more than PhosLo it's still not *prohibitively* expensive. The impression I get from extensive reading is that PhosLo at the moment is the preferred standard of care. It's twice as effective as calcium carbonate per amount taken.

So there's quite a bit of difference between $150 and $600 just as there's quite a bit of difference between $600 and $1100. What I'm trying to get at is that I get the distinct *impression* that many more patients are taking PhosLo than are taking calcium carbonate in *spite* of the higher cost. Since I see nothing anywhere about this higher cost deterring many people from taking PhosLo, I see no reason to believe that the higher cost of Renagel will deter more than about 25% of people from switching to Renagel. Of course how peoples insurance is going to handle all this will make a tremendous difference and I don't know enough about that aspect of things to make a comment on it. Either people themselves or their insurance companies seem to be willing to spring for the extra bucks that Phoslo costs vs. Calcium carbonate. I still think an awful lot of people and insurance companies will choose Renagel over the competition. In the long run they will be healthier and thus suffer fewer overall medical bills because of that choice even with the higher cost of Renagel figured in. Personally I continue to feel that Renagel will do around $250 million withen 2-3 years of approval assuming that European and Asian approval also kicks in. Just my 2 cents.
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