[Ip-health] Three letters to NYT on high co-payments article

[James Love]

Published: April 20, 2008

Related
Co-Payments Soar for Drugs With High Prices (April 14, 2008)
Editorial: When Drug Costs Soar Beyond Reach (April 15, 2008)

To the Editor:

Mark Allen Miller

=E2=80=9CCo-payments Go Way Up for Drugs With High Prices=E2=80=9D (front p=
age, April
14) makes it clear that the notion of insurance as a for-profit venture
has almost completely eroded the notion of insurance as a social good in
this country.

Charging patients suffering from multiple sclerosis or cancer hundreds
of dollars each month for their drugs =E2=80=94 on top of their insurance
premiums =E2=80=94 distorts the concept of insurance to the point where it =
is
almost unrecognizable.

As a healthy person paying premiums, I would like to see the burden of
these high-priced drugs be shared among all of us rather than
concentrated on those already burdened by illness.

Let=E2=80=99s bring the notion of insurance as a social good back into the
foreground. And while we are at it, let=E2=80=99s lower the price of
prescription drugs for everyone by allowing the federal government to
negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for its Medicare purchases.

Jennifer Reck
Cape Elizabeth, Me., April 14, 2008
The writer is a policy analyst for Prescription Policy Choices, a
nonprofit educational and public policy organization.


To the Editor:

By forcing patients to pay a high percentage of the cost of expensive
drugs, the new drug-industry pricing system places an undue burden on
the most critically ill. It is ironic that as more progress is made in
discovering new treatments, this system, supposedly designed to keep
insurance costs down across the board, winds up undermining our years of
effort to get promising new drugs to those who really need them.

For example, before the discovery of Gleevec, patients with chronic
myelogenous leukemia had about a 50 percent chance of survival after
five years. Gleevec has led to a 95 percent survival rate, but this
pricing system for co-payments will put the drug out of range for
countless patients.

Hildy Dillon
Senior Vice President
Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
White Plains, April 14, 2008



To the Editor:

Your article about soaring out-of-pocket expenses for medication is a
wake-up call. I can imagine a working-class mother with breast cancer
not being able to afford the co-payments for chemotherapy. This is
clearly unacceptable and requires immediate remedy.

You do not mention one major factor behind this shift of costs to the
patient. Many people receive health care through employer-based plans,
in which insurance companies manage the plans but companies pay the
costs directly. Cost containment by employers may be the major player
pushing this trend.

We need a federal national catastrophic illness rights bill to protect
those among us from such abusive practices. I would like to see the
presidential candidates specifically address this issue. The senators
can introduce legislation now and not make empty promises.

Mitchel L. Galishoff
Valley, Ala., April 14, 2008

The writer is an internist.


To the Editor:

Re =E2=80=9CWhen Drug Costs Soar Beyond Reach=E2=80=9D (editorial, April 15=
):

I take issue with your statement that =E2=80=9Cdrug companies, especially t=
he
biotechnology companies, are at the root of the problem; they often
charge exorbitant prices for monopoly drugs that were developed with
heavy government assistance.=E2=80=9D

In 1999, the National Institutes of Health investigated whether federal
research funding commonly led to the development of pharmaceutical
drugs. Of 47 drugs that had earned revenues of $500 million or more,
N.I.H. support had figured significantly in only four. Federal financing
goes primarily to pre-commercial, fundamental research.

In addition, you do not consider the critical role of federal regulation
in pushing up prices. It now takes 12 to 15 years and more than $1
billion, in direct and indirect costs, to bring a new biopharmaceutical
to market.

Henry I. Miller
Stanford, Calif., April 14, 2008

The writer, a medical doctor, is a research fellow at the Hoover
Institution.


--
_____________________________
James Love, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
http://www.keionline.org, mailto:james.love@keionline.org
voice +1.202.332.2670, fax +1.202.332.2673, US mobile +1.202.361.3040, Gene=
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