Cancer Doctors Protest 'Astronomical' Drug Costs

[davidn3600]

With some new, potentially lifesaving cancer drugs costing up to $138,000 a year, about 120 leading cancer specialists have joined forces in an unusual protest aimed at getting pharmaceutical companies to cut prices.

Charging high prices for drugs cancer patients need to survive is like “profiteering” from a natural disaster by jacking up prices for food and other necessities, leading cancer doctors and researchers from around the world contend in a new paper published in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology.

Of 12 new cancer drugs that received FDA approval last year, 11 of them cost in excess of $100,000 a year—prices that the specialists attack as “astronomical,” “unsustainable,” and maybe even immoral. What’s more, only three of these drugs were found to improve patient survival rates and of these, two only increased it by less than two months, according to the Washington Post.

“Advocating for lower drug prices is a necessity to save the lives of patients,” say the specialists who wrote the paper, who specialize in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), but emphasize that sky-high drug costs affect patients with many types of cancer.

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/cancer-doctors-protest-astronomical-drug-costs

[still_one]

1. Here is the problem, it can take 10 years to get a drug out into the market. There is a cost

associated with that. The pharmaceutical companies pay for those costs. The question is what is the real cost to recoup that, plus make a reasonable profit?

Jonas Salk who developed the polio vaccine, refused to patent his vaccine. He refused to let something to help billions around the world not be given access to the vaccine because of cost. A true humanitarian.

In order for this to happen today, it would take the government to provide a significant proportion of the funding. I suspect that if the trillions that were wasted on the wars we had were instead used to pursue such research, tremendous advances would be made at affordable prices.

Due the politics that exist today, I doubt very much it will happen in the near future, though Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company did donate Gleevec to any person who could not afford it, however, that also created issues:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/05/business/drug-maker-s-vow-to-donate-cancer-medicine-falls-short.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

http://www.novartis.com/newsroom/media-releases/en/2013/1689290.shtml

Another reason why the government should help fund development of these pharmaceuticals is because many of the the anti-cancer drugs are not a cure, but a necessary path to understanding and knowledge, where an actual vaccine or cure would result

[Promethean]

2. Even if some of the research done by these companies may lead to a cure.

Everybody knows they are not looking for actual cures. Not when they can sell treatments for the amounts in the OP. I'd even be willing to bet everything I own and will earn for the rest of my life that if they did stumble on a real cure they would destroy it immediately and suppress any and all knowledge that such a thing was discovered.

[Kolesar]

5. "Everybody knows they are not looking for actual cures" <= pernicious nonsense

Enjoy the anonymity of an internet message board.

I suppose you do actually tell things like that to people you meet who have the misfortune of being too embarrassed by the situation to make you lose face.

[still_one]

11. absolutely not. Believe or not, scientists and researcher, even CEOs, get those diseases also.

[LiberalAndProud]

12. That's an excuse, not a reason.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/industries/21/

I've heard this argument. I don't find it convincing.

[SoCalDem]

3. At the "macro" level, when poor (especially older) people cannot afford those meds

the postpone treatments/stop treatments, and die quicker..

The more SS collectors who die sooner than otherwise, the more profit to fatcats at the top.

[skepticscott]

4. Sorry, but does anyone else see a little contradiction here?

"Charging high prices for drugs cancer patients need to survive is like “profiteering” from a natural disaster...."

"Of 12 new cancer drugs that received FDA approval last year, 11 of them cost in excess of $100,000 a year—prices that the specialists attack as “astronomical,” “unsustainable,” and maybe even immoral. What’s more, only three of these drugs were found to improve patient survival rates and of these, two only increased it by less than two months, according to the Washington Post."

[datasuspect]

6. when a person realizes, confronts, and surrenders to one simple notion:

EVERYTHING IN MODERN LIFE IS A RACKET DESIGNED TO RIP YOU OFF AND FUCK YOU OVER

then the outrage simply eases out of your body.

then you can go to tend your own garden.

your fellow Uhhhhhmerican is too stupid and brainwashed to care about REAL change. Not marketing slogan change, but blood and guts usurpation of the bribery machine.

it will never happen.

just get over it. you're on your own. if you can still see truth, you're a rare bird. turn back to nature and your family, become the custodian of the fire of truth so that it won't disappear from the earth, turn away from machines, turn away from the stupid.

tend your own garden.

there's nothing anyone can do about it until the entire system collapses.

[Laelth]

8. Beautiful post. Let not the fire of truth go out in the world. n/t

-Laelth

[jsr]

9. The profit motive always corrupts

The whole damn oncology business sucks.

[Laelth]

7. Of course, it's profiteering.

The whole medical/insurance industry is engaged in profiteering. They profit from the sickness and misery of others.

While I am pleased that these doctors are standing up for a little economic justice, it's rather ironic that they act like this is a new phenomenon. It's not.

-Laelth

[Wednesdays]

14. They make so much profit, they pay people to defend them on Internet message boards.

Gee, I wonder if there are any here on DU?

[1-Old-Man]

10. I have cancer, one of the pills I take cost somewhere between $7000 and $14,000 per month

4 pills per day, 120 of them per month - the price is astronomical. I have very good insurance and so I'm only putting up a co-pay of $80 for a month's supply but for those who don't enjoy that sort of coverage the only choice open to them is to go over-seas for a cheaper price. I have seen the pills for sale as low as $5,200 for a month's supply, but that is if they are bought from India and there is a big problem with counterfeits coming from there. Next in line price wise is Israel, where they can be had for just under $7,000 per month, and my wife found them for sale someplace domestically for slightly over $14,000 per month. Its just insane.

Before these pills I was in normal Chemotherapy, actually my second go at it. The first Chemo treatment I went through was ineffective. The second one was working but I hit my lifetime limit of how much of the stuff they could put in me and so we had to stop. Those treatments were costing $25,000 once very three weeks. As it turns out my death will not be an inexpensive affair.

[tallahasseedem]

13. One of my patients had to...

take an $750 injection a day for the next 30 days. This person is out of money, living off Social Security, it absolutely pains me.