The Sky-High Price of Chemotherapy: Why Do Cancer Drugs Cost So Much?

As if its not bad enough to find out you have cancer, nearly all cancer patients have to also contend with how to pay for treatment, including somehow managing the sky-high cost of drugs (chemotherapy). It seems like insult to injury (quite literally), right?

Overall, cancer drug prices are skyrocketing. Of the 12 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for various cancer conditions in 2012, 11 were priced above $100,000 for a year of treatment. Writing in an op-ed in the New York Times in October 2012, three physicians at New York Citys Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center noted that the typical new cancer drug coming on the market a decade ago cost $4,500 per month (in 2012 dollars); since 2010 the median price has been around $10,000.

These and other injustices led an international group of doctors to band together and call for lowering the cost of chemotherapy drugs. In the medical journal Blood the physiciansall of whom specialize in treating a form of leukemia, or cancer of the bloodwrote that cancer drug costs are too high, unsustainable, may compromise access of needy patients to highly effective therapy, and are harmful to the sustainability of our national healthcare systems.

The doctors went so far as to say that charging high prices for drugs that are needed to save lives or improve health is a form of profiteering, like jacking up the price of necessities like food and water after a natural disaster. Thanks, too, to a puzzling price-fixing equation used by pharmaceutical companies, the longer that a given chemotherapeutic treatment prolongs life, the more it costs. Certain forms of a treatment for leukemia can cost each patient as much as $138,000 per yearand thats not uncommon for drugs to get rid of cancer and keep it away.

One group of doctors went so far as to say that charging very high prices for cancer drugs that people need to live is a form of profiteering.

Needless to say, many patients cannot afford prices like these. Theyand their familiestoo often go broke and die trying to pay for this and other treatments, which can include surgery and radiation. In one bizarre policy, in many U.S. states health insurance companies will refuse to reimburse cancer patients if they take the drug in a pill form versus an intravenous (IV) treatment at a clinic. Thankfully, more states are finally fighting back on harmful policies like this: Following legislation passed in 22 other states and the District of Columbia, the Cancer Treatment Fairness Act recently passed both the Florida Senate and House; if approved by the states governor it would require insurers to cover oral chemo treatment the same way they cover IV treatment done in a clinic (whats called an oral chemotherapy parity law).

But the bigger question is, of course: Why do these drug prices have to be so high in the first place? What makes them so expensive? First comes the cost of researching the drugs. The average cancer drug costs an estimated $60 to $90 million to research.

A 2012 review published in Nature found that 89 percent of studies on possible cancer drugs published findings that other scientists couldnt replicate, meaning they werent the solid, definitive findings that move us closer to safer, more effective medications. Put another way, after all this research, the scientists had pretty much hit a dead end.Professor B.M. Hegde, M.D., Ph.D., says that the competitive publish-or-perish climate in cancer research prompts scientists to sometimes omit unfavorable data or manipulate their results in order to assure that their grants continue.

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The Sky-High Price of Chemotherapy: Why Do Cancer Drugs Cost So Much?