Aetna CEO says no decision yet on how to cover hepatitis C drugs

[January 14, 2015]  (Reuters) - The chief executive of health insurer Aetna Inc on Tuesday said that the company had not yet decided which hepatitis C drugs to cover now that there are two breakthrough treatments on the market, but said that the company was actively working on a decision.

Investors are watching closely to see how insurers decide to cover these drugs, which cost tens of thousands of dollars per treatment, after AbbVie Inc started a competitor to Gilead Sciences' breakthrough hepatitis C treatment.

Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefit manager in the United States, dropped Gilead Sciences hepatitis C drugs from its main commercial formulary to favor the new, cheaper competitor while CVS Health said it would offer Gilead as a preferred drug.

"We have not made a decision on one drug or another," Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

Bertolini also said that the company's public exchange business has been better than expected so far in 2015, as the Feb. 15 deadline for enrollment draws near.

He said the business has been modestly profitable and that enrollment for 2014 also ended up higher than it had foreseen.

In 2014, about 7 million people signed up for these new individual health insurance plans created under the national healthcare reform law. For 2015 the government hopes to increase that enrollment to more than 9 million people.

(Reporting by Susan Kelly in Chicago and Caroline Humer in San Francisco; Editing by Grant McCool)

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