Too many cancer patients forced to make harrowing choice: death or financial ruin

Too many cancer patients forced to make harrowing choice: death or financial ruin  

The Dallas Morning NewsApril 8, 2015  

The following editorial appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, April 7:

For too many cancer patients in our broken system, treatment comes down to a harrowing choice: death or financial ruin.

Prescription drug costs for new cancer treatments are soaring at unsustainable rates, as Dallas Morning News reporter Jim Landers chronicled in a recent report. By 2020, the cost of specialty drugs for cancer and other diseases could reach $400 billion a year, by some estimates, about $100 billion more than the entire prescription drug industry today. New cancer drugs today can cost from several hundred to thousands of dollars monthly, price tags that even people with insurance often can't afford.

What good is a cancer drug if most Americans can't afford it? Making matters worse is that the same drugs in Europe or Canada often cost a fraction of that price. As Clifford Hudis, a leading cancer expert, told The Dallas Morning News: "We don't have a functioning marketplace as regards cancer and drugs. One result is, everybody in this space is victimized."

Without serious reform, this problem and its impact on aging Americans is going to get dramatically worse. Cancer is the second-leading cause of death, behind only heart disease, and is heading rapidly toward the No. 1 spot. Worldwide, annual cancer cases are expected to rise over the next two decades from 14 million diagnoses to 22 million. This year, more than 1.8 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer.

Drug companies say they need to recoup research investments, which can run more than $1.5 billion for successful treatments. That may be true, but the system also lacks transparent price competition. Medicare, the federal health insurance program, is prohibited from negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry over prices. And while many hospitals receive discounts on cancer drugs under Medicare rules, they aren't required to share those discounts with patients. Also, it is illegal to import the same drug at a cheaper price from pharmacies overseas, although many people do it as a last resort.

Drug companies should expand special patient saving programs to reduce costs. Medicare rules should allow the government to negotiate better rates with drug companies. Cancer drugs also should be legally available from certified providers offshore. And, like most of the health care system, the cancer treatment infrastructure needs a dose of financial transparency.

There will always be a tipping point in modern medicine at which patients are priced out of lifesaving medications, but there's so much more we can do to swing the pendulum back toward the benefit of patients. More and more lives are depending on it.

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