Lower costs of cancer drugs

Dallas Morning News: For too many cancer patients in our broken system, treatment comes down to a harrowing choice: death or financial ruin.

Prescription drug costs for new cancer treatments are soaring at unsustainable rates, as Dallas Morning News reporter Jim Landers chronicled in a recent report.

By 2020, the cost of specialty drugs for cancer and other diseases could reach $400 billion a year, by some estimates, about $100 billion more than the entire prescription drug industry today. New cancer drugs today can cost from several hundred to thousands of dollars monthly, price tags that even people with insurance often can’t afford.

What good is a cancer drug if most Americans can’t afford it? Making matters worse is that the same drugs in Europe or Canada often cost a fraction of that price.

Drug companies should expand special patient saving programs to reduce costs. Medicare rules should allow the government to negotiate better rates with drug companies. Cancer drugs also should be legally available from certified providers offshore. And, like most of the health care system, the cancer treatment infrastructure needs a dose of financial transparency.

There’s so much more we can do to swing the pendulum back toward the benefit of patients.