The above article, published in the New York Times April 25, references a paper showing that the costs of leukemia drugs are actually harming patients. The paper, authored by Dr. Hagop Kantarjian, Professor of Medicine and Chair of the Leukemia Dept at MD Anderson, and signed by 120 leukemia specialists, was published in the journal "Blood," is still reverberating in the world of medicine and beyond. Yesterday Medscape, a popular professional portal for physicians, sent out a mass e-mail consisting of the following quartet of articles:
Special Report: High Cost of Cancer Care
From Medscape Oncology
1. Cancer Cost: 'Number-One Healthcare Issue' by Zosia Chusteka
2. Bankruptcy or Cure? A Cancer Patient's Dilemma by Bruce Chessen, MD
3. New Adverse Event in Cancer Treatment: 'Financial Toxicity' by Nick Mulcahy
4. Bankruptcy Rate Doubles With Cancer Diagnosis by Nick Mulcahy
I was shocked to see this because I always thought that Medscape was a lackey to Big Pharma, and I always took what is published there with a grain of salt. But here we have national experts talking about the very real concept of "financial toxicity!" Hallelujah! In the first article Dr. Kantarjian is interviewed and says they found a substantial percent (10%) of chronic myelogenous leukemia patients fail to take their drugs largely because of cost. This is a drug they need to take on a long term basis or they will die. The cost of new cancer drugs has skyrocketed from <$5,000/yr before 2000 to over $100,000/yr. The drug companies say it costs $1 billion to develop a new cancer drug, but Kantarjian says this is myth. It costs no more than 10% of that, and they recoup their costs quickly. Despite having already recouped their costs years ago, this past January the makers of imatinib, raised their price overnight from $25,000/yr to $90,000/yr over the angry cries of patients and doctors alike. The article documents the huge variation of prices of these drugs in different countries with the US having 50-100% higher prices than the next most expensive country. It describes the 10 year survival for chronic myelogenous leukemia is 80% in Sweden, where they have no out of pocket costs, whereas here where patients have to pay a portion of the costs it is 60%. Dr. Kantarjian says he has learned there may be Congressional hearings as a result of his paper. More below
