France uses tax to put pressure on hepatitis C drug prices

France will tax drugmakers whose costly hepatitis C drugs threaten to throw off course its healthcare budget, the government has said, heaping pressure on pharmaceutical companies like Gilead Sciences to cut their prices.

The Socialist government said it had designed a "progressive contribution scheme" ensuring all patients can access new and more effective treatments against the liver-destroying virus, while limiting the burden of these drugs on state finances.

The government will selectively tax drugmakers when the total cost to the state from their hepatitis C drugs exceeds a certain amount each year, Health Minister Marisol Touraine said, as she unveiled the country's 2015 social security budget bill.

If social security spending on hepatitis C drugs exceeds 450 million euros ($567 million) in 2014, the makers of those drugs will be taxed based on the revenue they had reaped in excess of that cap, the ministry said in a presentation.

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