Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[Gator328]

Thanks Old!

From what I've seen, insurance companies are hesitant to approve drugs that have not gone through a full Phase 3 trial. So if Anavex ends up getting accelerated approva or based on its pivotal trial results it gets approval, it could harm its ability to convince insurance companies to cover it in the short-term. Long-term I believe there would be too much political pressure not to cover it.

What usually happens is that Medicare will be the first to cover a drug, and one by one the insurance companies follow suit. But this is going to add billions of dollars to their healthcare costs -- and while I do agree that the net costs will be lower with a good drug on the market, a lot of those cost savings do not pertain to private insurers (i.e., nursing and home-health aides, etc)