Costs for orally administered cancer drugs skyrocket

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/uonc-cfo042616.php

Public Release: 28-Apr-2016
Costs for orally administered cancer drugs skyrocket
Patients may increasingly take on cost burden
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

New cancer drugs, taken in pill form, have become dramatically more expensive in their first year on the market compared with drugs launched 15 years ago, calling into question the sustainability of a system that sets high prices at market entry in addition to rapidly increasing those prices over time.

The findings, reported today in JAMA Oncology, show that a month of treatment with the newest cancer drugs, introduced in 2014, were on average six times more expensive at launch than cancer drugs introduced in 2000, after adjusting for inflation. In other words, orally-administered drugs approved in 2000 cost an average of $1,869 per month compared to $11,325 for those approved in 2014.

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"Patients are increasingly taking on the burden of paying for these high-cost specialty drugs as plans move toward use of higher deductibles and co-insurance - where a patient will pay a percentage of the drug cost rather than a flat copay," Dusetzina said.

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