If you think the high costs of new $1,000-per-pill hepatitis C drugs are out of hand, CVS Health has some troubling news for you. The healthcare company is warning that the costs of a potent new class of cholesterol treatments could eclipse those other expensive medicines and overwhelm the U.S. healthcare system.
Two of the new injectable cholesterol treatments, called PCSK9 inhibitors, could gain U.S. approval as early as this summer. CVS said they could eventually be used by as many as 15 million patients at an annual cost of up to $150 billion a year if priced at $7,000 to $12,000 a year.
That would make the class of drugs the highest-selling in history,
Fox News reports.
"The resilience and ability of our health care system to absorb such high costs will be tested if rigid cost control mechanisms are not put in place," William Shrank, chief scientific officer for CVS, said in a statement.
The CVS call for cost controls follows criticism from insurers and politicians over the high cost of new effective treatments for hepatitis C from Gilead Science Inc. that fetch retail prices of up to $94,500 per patient for a course of treatment.
Unlike those drugs, which are typically taken for about 12 weeks, the cholesterol-lowering PCSK9s would be used for a lifetime.
CVS, the second-largest U.S. pharmacy benefit manager, negotiates drug prices for 65 million people through contracts with employers and health plans.
Amgen Inc. and a partnership of Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. are awaiting approval of rival PCSK9 inhibitors.
They are expected to be used first by patients with extremely high cholesterol — about 620,000 Americans. They also are likely to be used by those who cannot tolerate standard statin treatments.
© 2026 NewsmaxHealth. All rights reserved.