Rasonque Approved, Patients Stuck in Coverage Gap — SkimNews
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- Revolution Medicines closed its expanded access program for Rasonque the moment FDA approval came through, stranding patients mid-application like Juan Solano, a stage 4 pancreatic cancer patient in Washington state.
- Aetna told Kelsey Solano that FDA approval "does not guarantee coverage" and that reviews of newly approved drugs "may take several months," blocking her from obtaining the prior authorization that Revolution's (ON)PATH support program required.
- Rasonque carries a list price of nearly $40,000 per month; Solano obtained a seven-day supply for $9,286.67, with help from a GoFundMe and her 8-year-old daughter's $1,300 pancreatic cancer research nonprofit (which couldn't legally redirect the funds).
- Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla, a hematologist-oncologist at St. Luke's University Health Network, had a Medicare patient denied Rasonque coverage because the drug "is not properly listed with the Food and Drug Administration" — a denial reversed after he posted about it on X, though other St. Luke's patients remain waiting.
- Revolution Medicines' (ON)PATH patient support program requires an insurer prior authorization request, creating a catch-22 for patients whose insurers haven't yet added the newly approved drug to their formularies or systems.
- Julie Fleshman, president and CEO of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, said the approval-to-coverage gap is common for oncology launches and called for policy work to address it.
Why it matters: The gap between FDA approval and commercial coverage is structural: drug databases, payer systems, and expanded access closures aren't synchronized, and for pancreatic cancer — one of the deadliest and most aggressive cancers — a review period of "several months" can outlast a patient's life, turning a breakthrough into a bottleneck.
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