Is employment group insurance financing of expensive gene therapies threatened in the United States?

Abstract

Despite the potential of gene therapy to transform the lives of patients with rare genetic diseases, serious concern has been raised about the financing of the high up-front costs for such treatments, and about the ability of the employer sponsored insurance system in the U.S., particularly in small firms, to pay for discoveries of this type. In this paper, we provide a conceptual framework and empirical evidence to support the proposition that, at present, private group insurance financing of cost-effective gene therapies is not only feasible and competitively necessary in the labor market for employers regardless of group size, but also that currently the number of U.S. workers in small firms who might be stressed by very high-priced claims is a tiny fraction of the group market for genetic treatments. The current system of employer-paid self-insurance supplemented by stop-loss coverage should be able to facilitate the use of new cost-effective gene therapies. Other alternative methods of financing that have been proposed may not be urgently needed. There are, however, some concerns about the long-term resilience of this system if stoploss premiums continue to have high growth.