[Ip-health] Cancer care can sap a lifetime of savings

[Joana Ramos]

<snip>
>
> MANY CANCER PATIENTS STRUGGLE TO PAY FOR CARE
>
> One in five have delayed or missed treatments because of cost.
>
> Among the uninsured, nearly 70% have missed or delayed care, and 43%
> went without vital prescriptions.
<snip>
>
> Experts say it's easy to see why patients feel strained. The daily
> cost of specialty cancer therapies, which are predominantly biotech
> drugs, grew by nearly 22% in 2005, compared with 3% for other drugs,
> according to the 2006 Medco Drug Trend Report.
<snip>
> Companies may spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the
> drug even after licensing them, says Ken Johnson, senior vice
> president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America,
> or PhRMA.
> "Price controls have never succeeded in keeping down costs or
> expanding access," Johnson says. "Studies demonstrate that they
> inhibit future research and development that patients need and expect
> from the world's leading pharmaceutical innovators.




usatoday.com/news/health/2006-07-25-cancer-costs_x.htm

Cancer care can sap a lifetime of savings
Posted 7/25/2006 9:07 PM ET
(copied as fair use)

Source: Cancer, 2006
By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY
Frank Beck never put a price on the value of his life before he was
diagnosed with cancer.

In the first six months of therapy, however, his care cost his health
plan and family more than $150,000. Beck, 62, says he often wonders, "Am
I worth it?"

Like a growing number of cancer patients who are treated with expensive
new therapies, Beck worries about exhausting his family's savings to
delay his death. He was diagnosed in June 2005 with advanced colon
cancer, which usually proves fatal within two years.

"You add all these things up and you say, 'How can I justify that? Am I
taking money away from everybody else just so I can be around a little
bit longer?' " says Beck, a father of seven children, ages 17 to 38,
from Ada, Okla.

"My children keep telling me I'm worth it, but I don't know."

Care can be costly


MANY CANCER PATIENTS STRUGGLE TO PAY FOR CARE

*One in five have delayed or missed treatments because of cost.

*Among the uninsured, nearly 70% have missed or delayed care, and 43%
went without vital prescriptions.


Many cancer patients struggle to pay for care. One in five have delayed
or missed treatments because of cost, according to a report in June in
the journal Cancer.

Experts say it's easy to see why patients feel strained. The daily cost
of specialty cancer therapies, which are predominantly biotech drugs,
grew by nearly 22% in 2005, compared with 3% for other drugs, according
to the 2006 Medco Drug Trend Report.

Although Beck has good insurance, he has had to pay for frequent trips
to Oklahoma City and Houston to visit specialists. In all, he estimates
that his family has spent more than $12,000 out-of-pocket. He says he
agreed to pursue treatment only because of his children.

"I told him the best thing we could ever have is him alive," says his
daughter, Leilani Beck, 20, who lives with her parents and pays her own
tuition at a local college.

Like many cancer patients, Beck is frustrated by the high cost of his
care. As a taxpayer, Beck notes that he has helped to finance some of
the cancer therapies he now takes. According to the National Cancer
Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, NCI scientists
discovered or developed about half the drugs now used to treat cancer.

For example, the institute spent $45 million to study the
Genentech-marketed Avastin, one of the drugs used to treat Beck's colon
cancer. "It's unfair," Beck says. "We've already paid for this."

Drug industry officials note that they collaborate with government
researchers in different ways. Sometimes, companies license products
developed at the health institutes. Companies may spend hundreds of
millions of dollars to develop the drug even after licensing them, says
Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA.

In a written statement, Johnson says companies also may pay the NIH a
fraction of sales for marketed drugs as well as a royalty fee and other
payments.

Walter Moore, Genentech's vice president for government affairs, notes
that Avastin is different. Genentech conducted the drug's early
research. The cancer institute supplied additional funding after
Genentech had spent 10 years studying the drug. Genentech continues to
invest in Avastin, leading 130 clinical studies of the drug.

NCI funding of Avastin represents "a sliver" of what Genentech is
spending, Moore says. "That $45 million was very well spent for public
health, because patients got proven therapies quicker."

If drug companies won't lower their prices, Beck says, government
programs such as Medicare should have the right to negotiate for cheaper
drugs. But Congress has barred the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services from negotiating prices for Medicare's new prescription drug
program.

Johnson notes that the hundreds of individual health plans that provide
Medicare's prescription drug plan do negotiate prices.

"Price controls have never succeeded in keeping down costs or expanding
access," Johnson says. "Studies demonstrate that they inhibit future
research and development that patients need and expect from the world's
leading pharmaceutical innovators.

"That is bad news for patients who are counting the days until new
medicines are found."

He'll keep on fighting

Some doctors note that health care =97 especially the treatment of deadly
diseases such as cancer =97 isn't a free market. David Johnson, former
president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, says cancer
patients can't shop for drugs the way they shop for optional purchases,
such as cars.

Beck notes that certain government agencies, such as the Department of
Veterans Affairs, get an automatic 24% discount on medicines. These
groups also can negotiate for even steeper discounts, says Michael
Valentino, chief consultant for the VA's pharmacy benefits management
strategic health care group.

Other countries also negotiate drug costs, says Jane Weeks, a professor
at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "We subsidize drug prices in
other countries that do have price controls," Weeks says.

Despite Beck's unease over the cost of his care, he plans to continue
therapy to honor his family's wishes. He walks 2 miles a day to keep up
his strength. But even with the best of modern medicine, Beck says, he
has relatively little control over how long he will survive.

"I tell my children I'll do everything I can to comply with their
requests," Beck says. "But I can't promise anything."

--
Joana Ramos, MSW
Cancer Resources & Advocacy
7303 23rd Ave. NE
Seattle, WA  98115
206-229-2420
http://ramoslink.info/