$93K cancer drug: What is a life worth?

Associated Press

BOSTON

Cancer patients, brace yourselves. Many new drug treatments cost nearly $100,000 a year, sparking fresh debate about how much a few months more of life is worth.

The latest is Provenge, a first-of-a-kind therapy approved in April. It costs $93,000 a year and adds four months’ survival, on average, for men with incurable prostate tumors. Bob Svensson is honest about why he got it: Insurance paid.

“I would not spend that money,” because the benefit doesn’t seem worth it, says Svensson, 80, a former corporate finance officer from Bedford, Mass.

His supplemental Medicare plan is paying while the government decides whether basic Medicare will cover Provenge and for whom. The tab for taxpayers could be huge — prostate is the most common cancer in American men. Most of those who have it will be eligible for Medicare, and Provenge will be an option for many late-stage cases. A meeting to consider Medicare coverage is set for Nov. 17.

“I don’t know how they’re going to deal with that kind of issue,” said Svensson, who was treated at the Lahey Clinic Medical Center in suburban Boston. “I feel very lucky.”

For the last decade, new cancer-fighting drugs have been topping $5,000 a month. Only a few of these keep cancer in remission so long that they are, in effect, cures.

For most people, the drugs may buy a few months or years. Insurers usually pay if Medicare pays. But some people have lifetime caps, and more people are uninsured because of job layoffs in the recession. The nation’s new health-care law eliminates these lifetime limits for plans that were issued or renewed Sept. 23 or later.

Celgene Corp.’s Revlimid pill for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, can run as much as $10,000 a month; so can Genentech’s Avastin for certain cancers. Now Dendreon Corp.’s Provenge rockets price into a new orbit.

Unlike drugs that people can try for a month or two and keep using only if they keep responding, Provenge is an all-or-nothing $93,000 gamble. It’s a one-time treatment to train the immune system to fight prostate tumors, the first so-called cancer vaccine.

Part of why it costs so much is that it’s not a pill cranked out in a lab, but a treatment that is individually prepared, using each patient’s cells and a protein found on most prostate cancer cells. It’s costly and time-consuming to make.

It’s also in short supply, forcing the first rationing of a cancer drug since Taxol and Taxotere were approved 15 years ago. At the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, doctors plan a modified lottery to decide which of its 150 or so eligible patients will be among the two a month it can treat with Provenge. An insurance pre-check is part of the process to ensure they financially qualify for treatment.

“I’m fearful that this will become a drug for people with more resources and less available for people with less resources,” said M.D. Anderson’s prostate-cancer research chief, Dr. Christopher Logothetis.

For other patients on other drugs, money already is affecting care:

Job losses have led some people to stop taking Gleevec, a $4,500-a-month drug by Novartis AG that keeps certain leukemias and stomach cancers in remission. Three such cases were recently described in the New England Journal of Medicine, and all those patients suffered relapses.

Retirements are being delayed to preserve insurance coverage of cancer drugs.

Lifetime caps on insurance benefits are hitting many patients, and laws are being pushed in dozens of states to get wider coverage of cancer drugs. In Quincy, Mass., 30-year-old grad student Thea Showstack testified for one such law after pharmacists said her first cancer prescription exceeded her student insurance limit. “They said ‘OK, that will be $1,900,’” she said. “I was absolutely panicked.” The federal health-care law forbids such caps on plans issued or renewed Sept. 23 or later.

Tens of thousands of people are seeking help from drug companies and charities that provide free medicines or cover co-pays for low-income patients. Genentech’s aid to patients has risen in each of the last three years and the company says nearly 85 percent of Americans earn less than $100,000, making them potentially eligible for help if no other programs like Medicaid will pay.

Doctors and insurers increasingly are doing the cruel math that many cancer patients want to avoid, and questioning how much small improvements in survival are worth. A recent editorial in a medical journal asked whether the extra 11 weeks that Genentech’s Herceptin buys for stomach cancer patients justified the $21,500 cost.

Doctors also have questioned the value of Genentech’s Tarceva for pancreatic cancer. The $4,000-a-month drug won approval by boosting median survival by a mere 12 days.

When is a drug considered cost-effective?

The most widely quoted figure is $50,000 for a year of life, “though it has been that for decades — never really adjusted — and not written in stone,” said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University expert on health-care costs.

Even as new cancer treatments offer hope for some, their cost is out of reach for many. Tens of thousands of people seek help from drug companies and charities that provide free medicines or cover co-pays for people who can’t afford it. Here is a list of places to seek help:

Genentech: www.GenentechAccessSolutions.com

Novartis: http://www.patientassistancenow.com

Patient Advocate Foundation: 800-532-5274 www.patientadvocate.org

CancerCare: 866-552-6729 www.cancercarecopay.org

Chronic Disease Fund: 877-968-7233 www.cdfund.org

Healthwell Foundation: 800-675-8416 www.healthwellfoundation.org

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: 877-557-2672 www.LLS.org/copay

National Organization for Rare Disorders: 800-999-6673 www.rarediseases.org

Patient Access Network Foundation: 866-316-7263 www.panfoundation.org

Patient Advocate Foundation: 866-512-3861 www.copays.org

Patient Services Inc.: 800-366-7741 www.patientservicesinc.org

Source: Associated Press