Cancer Therapy Cost Too High for Patients, Doctors Say

[question everything]

Cancer medicines that cost more than $100,000 a year aren’t morally justifiable and may keep patients from getting life-saving treatments, a group of more than 100 leukemia doctors said.

Of the 12 cancer medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, 11 cost more than $100,000 annually, the physicians said in an article in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology, published online.

The paper highlights the debate over how much leeway drugmakers such as Pfizer Inc. (PFE) should have in setting the prices of new cancer medicines and whether pricing practices harm patients and health-care systems. While companies should be allowed to profit, a product that can help a patient survive should be priced affordably, the cancer specialists wrote.

(snip)

The paper was written by doctors who are specialists in chronic myeloid leukemia, which accounts for about 10 percent of the 48,610 new leukemia cases estimated by the National Cancer Institute. The survival rate hovers at about 60 percent for the disease in the U.S., compared with 80 percent in Sweden. Costs in Sweden are managed and patients may be more likely to comply with treatment while they don’t have the same cost concerns as U.S. patients, the doctors said.

More..

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-25/cancer-therapies-cost-too-high-for-patients-doctors-say.html

[BethanyQuartz]

1. Deprivatize medicine!

Is deprivatize a word? Well it is now.

[question everything]

2. And increase funds for basic research in universities

In the golden age of basic research, in the 70s, NIH and NSF funded this type of research of innovative, new compounds. It also took care of false start that, in pharmaceutical companies, would still have to be paid. The successful compounds then, would be licensed to pharmaceutical companies who would then further develop, test and market them.

But then came Reagan who cut funding for basic research, with his contempt to anything of higher learning, and new start-up biotech companies had to do all the work, including 10 and more years to see a result.

[BethanyQuartz]

3. And then keep the resulting profits public

Rather than turn them over to private companies after the public eats the cost of research.

So much wrong with our system of government. So so much. It just boggles the brain.

[spanone]

4. our entire medical system has been compromised by profit.....

death by lack of funding.....

[reformist2]

5. Price controls on medicine (finally) coming to the US??? Maybe someday...

Seems like when it comes to real economic reforms, we're always bringing up the rear among the developed nations.