VIDEO: Insurance companies pose a challenge to treating alopecia areata

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

It turns out that the biggest barrier for the use for JAK inhibitors is drug companies, and specifically I'm sure, Insurance companies. The drug companies have been, I think, active in trying to get approval, but somewhere along the way with conversations with the FDA, they have not been successful as of yet. So who knows exactly where the, where the ball was dropped, if the FDA has been slow or if the drug companies have been slow. But the, the reason now is the situation we're in now is that these JAK inhibitors are not approved by the FDA, yet although they very likely will be at some point in the future, but they're not approved yet. And so that is a perfect excuse that insurance companies use to not agree to pay for this for patients with alopecia areata, even though there's great evidence that it's effective and that's been published. And even though there's great evidence that it's pretty safe, there's weird rules that insurance companies try to make to save money. And a big one they have is that if a drug is not FDA approved for a particular indication, that they can very easily deny care. And so that's the biggest barrier.