The F.D.A. additionally required Biogen to conduct one other scientific trial to decide if the drug offered any proof of profit. In the years it would take for that trial to be accomplished, Aduhelm can be accessible to sufferers.

Medicare’s protection resolution is taken into account pivotal to the future of Aduhelm, which is priced at $28,200 a yr per affected person. Roughly 80 % of the sufferers eligible for the drug are sufficiently old to obtain protection beneath Medicare.

Biogen initially priced the drug at $56,000 a yr, however slashed the price in half final month after months of weak gross sales. Before Biogen’s value lower, Medicare’s actuarial division, appearing with out understanding what the protection resolution could be, imposed one of the biggest-ever increases in Medicare Part B premiums for 2022, partly pushed by the chance of Aduhelm protection.

After Biogen’s value lower, advocacy teams for Alzheimer’s sufferers urged C.M.S. to decrease the premium enhance. On Monday, the secretary for well being and human companies, Xavier Becerra, mentioned that he was instructing C.M.S. to re-examine the premium hike “given the dramatic price change of the Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm.”

Medicare officers are supposed to decide protection primarily based on whether or not a drug is a “reasonable and necessary.,” and in a briefing with reporters, officers mentioned value wasn’t an element of their resolution.

Dr. Fleisher, acknowledging the uncommon nature of the resolution, mentioned that “C.M.S. is using its authority provided by Congress to determine if the drug is considered reasonable and necessary, meaning that the benefits of improvement of cognition outweigh the harms in the Medicare population.”

Several advocacy teams for sufferers, together with the Alzheimer’s Association, had pushed for approval of the drug and for Medicare protection, they usually expressed sturdy disappointment in the company’s preliminary resolution.