Cancer docs question skyrocketing drug prices

Top cancer experts called Thursday for steps to curb the rapidly escalating price of oncology drugs, warning that the current trajectory “will affect millions of Americans and their immediate families, often repeatedly” (Source: “Cancer experts call for curbs on rising drug prices,” Washington Post, July 22, 2015). 

The commentary in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, signed by 118 physicians from cancer centers across the country, noted that every new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration was priced at more than $120,000 per year. And the cost for each additional year lived by a patient has skyrocketed from $54,000 in 1995 to $207,000 in 2013. 

With insurance companies shifting more of the burden to consumers in the form of co-payments and deductibles, the doctors wrote, “10 percent to 20 percent of patients with cancer do not take the prescribed treatment or compromise it.”