Replies to post #157298 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

Cancer drug costs too high -

The authors are prominent oncologists at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The Zaltrap editorial in the NYT, which was penned by doctors at Sloan Kettering, eventually caused SNY to cut the US price by 50% (#msg-81295132).

Pretty funny given the article posted on this board (or SI) about MD Anderson charging absolutely outrageous prices for medical care.

More seriously after a lot of research on where the money goes the problem is clearly multi-factored - but one of them is US MD salaries going up faster than inflation for a long time (obviously not all docs - but touch labor specialists in particular). Of course that makes the editorial even funnier.

PS This does not mean that I think that drug pricing is reasonable - but it might be wise to avoid throwing rocks if you are an MD at Anderson.

[DewDiligence]

From the same WP editorial:

Of the 12 new cancer drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, 11 were priced above $100,000 annually.

Adding in Kadcyla, whose US price is well above $100K per year, that makes 12 out of 13.

[swampboots]

Brill says in article (Newsweek 7 month researched piece): Retuximab (Retuxan) 660 mg $13,500 for patient, maybe $3000-$3500 cost for Anderson....... Brill goes to long length to point out, those on Board of Anderson highly overpaid (article written by such a party in Washington Post)?

[DewDiligence]

Express Scripts [said] use of [US] cancer drugs [i.e. script volume] last year rose 3.4%, while costs [i.e. aggregate prices] increased 22.3%.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323494504578340393335386084.html

Inasmuch as the growth in aggregate prices outran the growth in volume by almost seven-fold, the price of the average US cancer drug clearly increased dramatically in 2012 vs 2011.

The above figures exclude Medicare and Medicaid. ESRX, one of the 3 large US PBM’s, handled 1.4 billion US prescriptions in 2012.