US cancer docs warn of rising drug prices
pharmafile | May 7, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | ASCO, Cancer, NICE, Obama, US, United States, republicans
American cancer doctors are warning that the rising price of oncology medicines is making it unaffordable for the country’s healthcare system.
This concern follows the cost of cancer drugs which have doubled over the past ten years to around $10,000 per month in the US, with the global cost now nearing $100 billion.
“This is a moral imperative,” says Clifford Hudis, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the nation’s largest group of cancer doctors. “I don’t think any of us want to look back and say we turned away and didn’t lead while this was happening.”
The doctors are speaking ahead of the annual ASCO cancer conference in Chicago which begins at the end of May.
This meeting highlights some of the most promising new and investigational oncology products from across the industry, but has increasingly become concerned with issues of cost and affordability.
The US system has remained liberal in its approach to drug costs, with most in the country seemingly dismissive about launching an ‘American NICE’.
In fact in 2010, during the enactment of new health reforms in the country, the idea was put forward by the Democrat president Barack Obama that some sort of health technology assessment (HTA) could be used in the US.
But Republican opponents balked at the idea in particular, calling them little more than ‘death panels’ – any talk of a HTA system was quickly abandoned.
It seems now, however, that any pricing pressure will come from the bottom up as cancer doctors are in the process of creating a way to measure the value of the drugs they prescribe, the first step in a drive to give patients affordable options.
Insurers are also increasingly paying only a percentage of the cost of high-priced drugs, forcing pharma to step in for consumers who can’t afford their products.
Politicians, meanwhile, have begun asking drugmakers to explain the cost of their products.
“We are looking at a drug pricing bubble,” Leonard Saltz, chief of the gastrointestinal oncology service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, tells Bloomberg.
In 2012 Saltz led a rebellion at his hospital against an expensive cancer drug, refusing to put it on the formulary because of its price. He adds: “At what point do we say this is more than society can afford?”
Prices ‘not morally justifiable’
This follows on from a damning editorial from more than 100 leading oncologists in April’s Blood journal, which argues that cancer medicines costing more than $100,000 a year ‘aren’t morally justifiable’ and may keep patients from getting life-saving treatments.
The paper found that of the 12 cancer medications approved by the FDA in 2013, 11 cost more than $100,000 annually.
“Hopes that the fundamentals of a free market economy and market competition will settle cancer drug prices at lower levels have not been fulfilled,” the doctors said in the journal.
Pharmafile will be attending the week’s events at Chicago using the Twitter hashtag #ASCO14 from 31 May.
Ben Adams
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