ViiV Healthcare—an HIV-focused company established by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Pfizer—announced it will continue a drug co-payment assistance program for drugs formerly sold by GSK and will extend the program to cover Selzentry (maraviroc), Viracept (nelfinavir) and Rescriptor (delavirdine), formerly sold by Pfizer. Co-pay assistance programs allow companies to reduce the out-of-pocket costs of medications for people with health insurance.

GSK and Pfizer combined both companies’ HIV programs into a single company, ViiV Healthcare, in the fall of 2009. Until now, however, the co-pay assistance programs of each company had remained separate as the two companies worked out the logistics of moving forward as a single entity.

The new ViiV co-pay program is a continuation of GSK’s co-pay program, which covers the first $100 of a person’s co-payment for each new GSK prescription. This means that people taking a former GSK product, such as Lexiva (fosamprenavir) and/or Epzicom (abacavir plus lamivudine), will continue to save up to $100 on their co-pay for each drug. Now people taking an antiretroviral formerly from Pfizer will qualify for the same co-pay assistance. Pfizer did not have a co-pay program in place at the time that ViiV was launched.

The program offers co-payment assistance to people with private health insurance in the United States, though not for residents of Massachusetts. It does not cover people without insurance or who have Medicare, Medicaid or who receive help from AIDS drug assistance programs (ADAPs). To learn more about the ViiV co-pay program, click here.*

*Note: The website for the program does not yet list Rescriptor, Selzentry or Viracept. These drugs, however, are included in the program.