The Fair Pricing Coalition (FPC) is an ad hoc group of activists who advocate with the pharmaceutical industry regarding the price of HIV and hepatitis drugs. Drug pricing is a complex issue, especially in regards to government payers. We have had great success in advocating for lower drug prices for government payers.
 

The FPC has as an overarching goal of ensuring that the prices set for new HIV and hepatitis drugs do not increase the net cost of treating people living with those diseases. The FPC also works to ensure that price increases do not detrimentally affect a patient’s ability to access drugs. As such the FPC requests that companies meet with the group prior to the setting the price of their newly approved drugs and before taking price increases, that representatives of the companies with the proper authority to set pricing attend those meetings, and that the companies alert the FPC before price increases go into effect.

FPC members hale from the HIV and HCV treatment activist community as well as the HIV and HCV policy communities. Members typically represent both the groups and organizations with which they are primarily affiliated as well as the FPC. The FPC also has an extended membership of dozens of HIV and hepatitis organizations that sign on to letters, and support the pricing positions of the FPC. In the end, the FPC hopes to stem the tide of ever increasing prices of HIV and hepatitis treatment, and to begin lowering the cost of treating these diseases.

In recent years, the FPC has also tackled patient co-pay programs and patient drug assistance programs (PAPs).  The FPC has negotiated co-pay programs with virtually every major HIV drug manufacturer.  The FPC is currently investigating PAPs in an effort to advocate for more meaningful PAP access for patients and to ensure that PAP eligibility requirements are more transparent to patients.

The FPC negotiates with pharmaceutical companies on the price of HIV and viral hepatitis drugs, both in the private insurance market, and for government programs such as the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) and Medicaid.

The FPC also negotiates with companies to ensure that health insurance co-payments (co-pays) are not so excessive as to create a financial hardship or limit access to life-saving treatment for people with HIV or viral hepatitis.

Lastly, the FPC negotiates with companies to ensure that Patient Assistance Programs (PAPs)—which provide medication free of charge for people with low incomes who do not other qualify for government assistance with health care—are adequately generous and easy to apply for.