In "The Cost of Living" in New York Magazine, the science writer Stephen S. Hall tries to explain why cancer drugs cost so much.
He goes through the familiar litany of drugs with excessive prices that give patients only an extra few weeks of life expectancy. Even for those who have heard these kinds of numbers before, they seem incredible. Avastin, a drug that has proven to be effective against advanced colon cancer, costs about $5,000 a month and extends median overall survival by 42 days. And it has to be taken for months to give patients those 42 days.
Hall quotes an oncologist who does the math to figure out what the cost of Avastin is for a year of life saved. The answer: $303,000, according to Hall.
Why, asks Hall, is the price so high? Avastin is not an outlier; newer drugs cost multiples of what Avastin does.
Hall talks about efforts by some oncologists to bring costs down. An op-ed decrying the costs of new cancer drugs prompted Sanofi to cut the astronomical price of a new drug, Zaltrap, in half. But that's not the answer to cutting drug prices across the board.
There is a lot here; getting through Hall's piece requires a little dedication (not helped by the lack of a "single page" button on New York's website). But the solutions, if there are any, aren't simple. The million-dollar-a-year cancer drug might not be far away.
-Paul Raeburn
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