A great letter to the editor appeared in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:
I am still trying to recover from the Food and Drug Administration's recent decision to go against its advisory panel's recommendation and approve Avastin to treat advanced breast cancer ("Genentech Clears Hurdle on Cancer Drug Avastin," Leading the News, Feb. 23).Although Avastin is ushering in a new wave of "targeted" cancer therapies, which minimize the gut-wrenching side-effects that many of us previously endured with our cancer treatment, the cost to our health-care system is astronomical. What is the true cost of this drug? While the average charge a provider may pay for Avastin may be $7,700 a month, it certainly isn't what a patient is billed. My experience in reviewing hundreds of medical claims involving Avastin shows that the average monthly patient charge when given in an oncologist's office is closer to $18,000 a month, while many hospitals charge more than $35,000 a month. With 38,000 American women eligible for this drug and an average treatment of six months, we suddenly have several billion dollars added to our annual health-care tab.
If the FDA has been given the power to make decisions that have such huge ramifications, it must be accountable for the cost-benefit ratio of these decisions. In this case, a study showed there was no survival benefit yet the cost will be billions of dollars per year. Is there any wonder why our health-care expenditures are expected to double to over $4 trillion within 10 years?
Peter S. Dumich, M.D.
Augusta, Ga.
This is just nuts........$18,000 to $30,000 per month........Why is the drug so expensive?
Posted by: Dennis at March 9, 2008 09:26 AMThe FDA's mandate is to ensure safety -- not efficacy. That is why suggestions to require head to head tests against competitors are controversial. That would be adding to the FDA's mandate. I'm not saying what they *should* be mandated to do; rather what they *are* mandated and funded to do. I'd like to see them take efficacy into account, but we have to provide more funding for more staff to do so.