The Cost of Cancer Care - or Big Pharma Is Getting Rich

Today's Boston Globe has an article on the "Sky-high drug prices test cancer patients". A few little pieces of information I drew from it:

"In the United States, a month’s supply of a brand-name cancer drug is now about $10,000, double what it was a decade ago, according to the report. The most expensive drug, at $117,648 for a course of treatment, is Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Yervoy, the first drug to prolong survival in patients in advanced stages of the skin cancer melanoma...."

"...On average, an insured patient’s total outlay for a year’s cancer treatment is about $9,000, excluding any assistance programs, with the insurance company covering the remaining $115,000, according to Aitken. Patients receiving older cancer drugs available as generics would pay less.

The higher the patients’ costs, the more likely they are to drop out of treatment before finishing. For example, the report notes that when copayments for hormonal breast cancer treatment exceed $30, there is a 10 percentage point drop in the number of patients who complete therapy, compared with when the copay is $30 or less. For patients who stop therapy and resume it later, the combined patient and insurer costs can jump 50 percent."

$9000 per year is not chump change and the insurance company's share is a paltry $115,000 - so you wonder why insurance companies are feeling the crunch.

But then I found a little article on Pfizer and how generics are hurting Pfizer's profits:

"Despite sharply lower expenses and taxes, Pfizer Inc.’s first-quarter profit dropped 15 percent, due to generic rivals and an end to some promotion efforts with other drug makers. Shares fell as the company missed revenue expectations by $730 million, but narrowly beat profit estimates. Revenue at the New York giant has fallen since 2011 as cheap generics hurt sales of some off-patent drugs that once brought in billions annually, particularly the cholesterol fighter Lipitor, the top-selling drug ever, with peak revenue of nearly $13 billion."

But before you feel sorry for Pfizer at all, their reported net income for the first quarter of 2014 was $2,329,000,000 on $11,353,000,000 reported sales.

So I dug a little more on Pfizer and found this lovely section on the Value of Medicines for Oncology in their Press Kits and Downloads. So I started reading after many self accolades on their benefit to society and was appalled by this section on page 2:

"Based on the average cancer drug expenditure per patient from diagnosis until death over the past decade, an analysis showed that the cost of that added year of life – plus any further benefits to the individual’s quality of living – was about $6,500. Given that surveys indicate that most Americans would be willing to pay $100–$300 thousand to extend their lives by one year, $6,500 represents a bargain for society.
 
For decades, the U.S. public and private sectors have committed substantial resources toward cancer research, but the societal payoff has not been well-understood. One study estimated between 1988 and 2000, life expectancy for cancer patients increased by roughly four years, and the average willingness-to-pay for these survival gains was roughly $322,000. Improvements in cancer survival during this period created 23 million additional life-years and roughly $1.9 trillion of additional social value. The share of value flowing to patients has been rising over time. In terms of economic rates of return, R&D investments against cancer have been a success, particularly from the patient’s point of view."

So they are justifying their high prices of cancer drugs based on the fact that most Americans would be willing to pay huge sums to extend their lives by one year. A bargain for society? So they are getting rich on our wishes not to die? Please. I have no sympathy.