Doctors Object to High Cancer-Drug Prices

[question everything]

More than 100 oncologists from top cancer hospitals around the U.S. have issued a harsh rebuke over soaring cancer-drug prices and called for new regulations to control them. The physicians are the latest in a growing roster of objectors to drug prices. Critics from doctors to insurers to state Medicaid officials have voiced alarm about prescription drug prices, which rose more than 12% last year in the U.S., the biggest annual increase in a decade, according to the nation’s largest pharmacy-benefit manager.

In an editorial published in the Mayo Clinic’s medical journal, the doctors focus attention on the financial burden to patients, saying the out-of-pocket costs are bankrupting many just as they’re fighting a deadly illness. Patients “have to make difficult choices between spending their incomes [and liquidating assets] on potentially lifesaving therapies or forgoing treatment to provide for family necessities,” the doctors write in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, a monthly peer-reviewed journal. As a result, about 10% to 20% of cancer patients don’t take their treatment as prescribed, the doctors say.

The 118 doctors come from institutions including Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minn., University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and University of Chicago.

They are the latest to target high prices. Members of Congress have demanded that pharmaceutical companies justify the pricing of hepatitis C medication, which costs tens of thousands of dollars per patient. Sen. Bernie Sanders has advised the Department of Veterans Affairs to break the patents on hepatitis C drugs so that generics companies can manufacture them more cheaply for ailing veterans.

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Amid the growing clamor, cancer medication has drawn particular ire. The average price of new cancer drugs in the U.S. increased five- to tenfold over 15 years, to more than $100,000 a year in 2012, according to the Mayo Clinic journal editorial. Some of the newest therapies, including those that harness a patient’s immune system to fight tumors, cost about $150,000 per patient a year. A top physician from Memorial Sloan Kettering recently warned that as doctors prescribe more cancer drugs for use in combination, the annual price could approach $300,000 per patient a year.

“What we’re fighting is the greed. The greed and the additional maneuvering that is being exercised after you’ve already recouped what you’ve invested. There is no control, no regulation,” Ayalew Tefferi, a hematologist at Mayo Clinic and the first signator on the new editorial, said in an interview. The pharmaceutical industry counters that its medicines provide great value to patients and the health-care system, and that high prices are needed to fund future research and development.

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Yet critics increasingly question whether the industry’s U.S. pricing truly reflects the value and R&D costs of medication, or simply what the largely unregulated market will bear. In most other countries, including Canada and European nations, single-payer health-care systems bargain hard with pharmaceutical companies, sometimes refusing to pay for drugs they deem unreasonably expensive. As a result, prices are often far lower in these markets.

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The U.S. market is highly fragmented, with many different parties, from employers to insurance companies to federal and state governments, paying for health care. That leaves drug buyers without the bargaining clout of single-payer systems in other countries.

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In their Mayo Clinic editorial, the physicians say much more could be done to control prices. They recommend allowing Medicare to negotiate pricing directly with pharmaceutical companies, something the federal insurance program is barred from doing under a 2003 law. That law leaves the negotiating to private insurance companies and pharmacy-benefit managers that administer the Medicare drug benefit—a policy critics say deprives Medicare of the ability to use its buying power to drive down prices. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services declined to comment on the physicians’ recommendation.

The doctors also propose changing U.S. law to allow patients to import cancer drugs for personal use from other countries including Canada; reforming the patent system to make it more difficult to prolong product exclusivity; and using better regulation to prevent branded pharmaceutical companies from striking any deals with generic-drug companies that would delay the market launch of lower cost generics. The editorial also links to a petition seeking signatures in support of the proposals.

More..

http://www.wsj.com/articles/doctors-object-to-high-cancer-drug-prices-1437624060

[djean111]

1. I think the TPP will address this - not in a good way -

The doctors also propose changing U.S. law to allow patients to import cancer drugs for personal use from other countries including Canada; reforming the patent system to make it more difficult to prolong product exclusivity; and using better regulation to prevent branded pharmaceutical companies from striking any deals with generic-drug companies that would delay the market launch of lower cost generics. The editorial also links to a petition seeking signatures in support of the proposals.

[question everything]

2. Indeed. At a recent post about why TPP should be opposed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016126834

The big bucks for those corporate lobbyists elbowing their way into trade talks can be found in extending U.S. patent, trademark and copyright protection to countries that have few or weak “intellectual property” laws. Knockoff drugs encourage U.S. drugmakers to charge far lower prices in other countries than at home. TPP could be a means for Big Pharma to raise prices in other parts of the world, where people can ill-afford higher health care costs.

[djean111]

3. Yes, we are going to get reamed.

The talk about the TPP has died down, but hopefully, when the thing is dragged out into the daylight, there will be enough backlash, although enough of Washington DC has been bought and it will likely pass. Personally, aside from phone calls and such, I have my unalterable list of DINOs I will never vote for, because they either enabled Fast Track, or belong to the New Democrat Coalition, which coordinates with the GOP and brags of eschewing ideology.

Imagine what votes would look like if they were not prearranged so that some politicians could vote NO, knowing that there are enough Yes votes to get the corporate job done. That's not a CT, that is what a Pelosi does, to protect vulnerable DINOs. No vote from me for the DINOs in Congress, the White House, and in my state.