Developing Cell Specific Cancer Treatments

In an article written by oncologist Lacie Glover, her concern was about the rising cost of cancer treatment, newly approved cancer drug costs of an average of $10,000 per month, and therapy costs averaging $30,000 per month. A patient typically pays 20-30% out of pocket for drugs. Therefore, the year’s average cost of new cancer medications would $26,000-$36,000, in addition to their health insurance premiums. If you wonder why insurance premiums are constantly on the rise, reflecting on the illnesses and costs to treat them.

It is terrifying to discover that you have terminal cancer. What is more terrifying is being left uninsured. This is what happened to one Californian. He lost his job due to recession cuts and tried to get onto his wife’s insurance coverage. However, she too lost her job and insurance. So now this man is left at home writing in pain because he cannot access pain killers. With his economic background, it is difficult to access federal coverage. There are problems like this occurring every day. I believe that we need to improve not only the amount of people covered by health insurance, but the quality as well. To illustrate this, I look to Kaiser Permanente, who I have both volunteered and been a patient with, for the model of

1 Kaiser Family Foundation Report on the Uninsured. Available at http://www.kff.org/uninsured/7451.cfm. 2 Danzon, P., et al. “The Impact of Price Regulation on the Launch Delay of New Drugs.” Health Economics, 2005; 14(3): 269-292. Available at http://hc.wharton.upenn.edu/danzon/html/Journal_Articles.htm. 3 The Boston Consulting Group. “Ensuring Cost Effective Access to Innovative Pharmaceuticals – Do Market Interventions Work?” April, 1999. Available at http://www.bcg.com/impact_expertise/publications/files/Ensuring_Cost_Effective_Access_Innovative_Pharmaceuticals_Apr1999.pdf 4 Thorpe, K. et al. “Differences in Disease Prevalence as a Source of the U.S.–European Health Care Spending Gap.” Health Affairs (Web Exclusive) Oct. 2, 2007. Available at www.healthaffairs.org.

: Insurance companies have the list of formularies that they agree to help cover but it is a tricky and a hassle to deal with. The patient must get a prescription of a similar drug first to make sure it works on them or even getting the doctor to prove that you need it. This is just to get coverage for an expensive drug. This can take weeks to do. It is a complicated list designed to give the patient the right drug for their conditions and that drug may not even be the first one that the doctor prescribes for them. It is a process to find out which one is right. When you fill a prescription of an approved drug of the formulary then you do not have to pay full price. Patients will have a copay through four different tiers. The first tier the patient pays a $20 copay on generic medications or a low cost medication, on the second tier, the patient pays a $40 copay for low cost brand names or a higher priced generic name drug. The third tier, the patient pays a $60 copay for brand name medication in which there is no generic, and the last and final tier which is number 4, the patient pays a $100 for the highest cost medication and/ or specialty drugs such as ones for chemotherapy. Some health care plan require the patient to pay full price for medication until they meet the deductible and then they can pay copays. Some formularies have coinsurance instead. The patient in these pays a percentage of

Over the last several years, beginning approximately around 2002 and reaching an all-time impossible high in 2016, prescribed drugs such as EpiPen, a life-saving allergy medication, or Bavencio, a cancer drug approved in March, or even older drugs such as insulin that has been around since 2002, have tripled in prices. Many drugs used for cancer, muscle dystrophy, bladder treatment, and more have prices ranging from $150,000 - $300,000 - a year. The director of health services research for the AARP Public Policy Institute, Leigh Purvis, says: “the simple answer is because there’s nothing stopping them”, referring to these pharmaceutical companies. Unlike many countries, The United States does not regulate drug prices, resulting in drug companies being able to charge whatever price they please. AARP Bulletin stated: “The supply of a newer medicine, however, is controlled entirely by the drug manufacturer that holds the patent rights. That gives the manufacturer a monopoly on the drug for the 20-year life of the patent. During that time, it is free to raise the price as frequently and as much as the market will bear.” AARP - The Ways of Drug Pricing.

As Patents are expiring, innovative and new drugs will surface to the market once again, skyrocketing the cost of prescriptions. This market of fluctuating costs shows the attractiveness in mandating supplemental health insurance. In order to buffer residents from overly unaffordable new treatments that may be necessary for one’s livelihood. Other alternatives should be considered before handing the reins over to our employers and privately paid for insurers, who may not have the consumers best interest at heart.

Effective medication helps with the rising cost of health care. When medication is working, the patient’s visits to the hospital and doctor’s office will decrease. The cost of new medication is exceeding the buyer’s ability to pay for it, and pharmaceutical companies begin to lose money when the drug loses its patent. However, generic drugs become available for the medication, and patients can afford to purchase it to treat their disease or condition. National discussions with providers, payers, and health policy makers have seriously considered various solutions for mitigating drug cost, with the ultimate goal of allowing patients to access appropriate and necessary treatments (Li & Shane, 2017). The government no longer has to decide who gets the medication, and certain therapies because of cost. Insurance companies will now cover the drug in its generic form. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical companies can no longer profit from and generic drug, and are forced to make new and improved drugs for profit. The patient will benefit by getting the medication that is needed to have a better quality of

According to www.congress.gov (2013) Bill S.1879 Cancer Treatment Parity Act 2013 sponsored by Sen. Alan Franken and Sen. Mark Kirk: “ Amends the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), the Public Health Service Act, and the Internal Revenue Code to require a group or individual health plan providing benefits with respect to anticancer medications administered by a health care provider to provide no less favorable coverage for prescribed, patient-administered anticancer medications used to kill, slow, or prevent the growth of cancerous cells and that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)”.

In the article “Insured, but Not Covered,” Rosenthal points out that, despite being insured through Empire Blue Cross, Karen Pineman had to pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket for a physical therapist when she broke her ankle while playing tennis, simply because her insurer refused to cover it. There are many more cases such as Pineman’s, where patients are forced to pay out of pocket since their insurance policy does not cover their specific treatments. The expenses can amount to thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for treatments of more serious illnesses such as cancer. This is a severe flaw in our current healthcare system, one that could devastate individuals such as Pineman, sinking them deeply in debt and forcing them into

Statistics were used from Illinois and Georgia between 2000 to 2003 because of the large data pool that was extensively documented, low to no copayments, and minimal capitated to uncapitated care plans (Tangka et al., 2015). The researchers used Medicaid patient data from two non-cancer patients (7024) to one cancer patients (3512) for their data pool using multivariable regression analysis (Tangka et al., 2015). The data was organized by age, sex, race, diagnosis, and costs for treatment of the patient’s last four months of life. For the cancer patients, the researchers further organized the information by the primary cancer site, stage, and the amount of time from diagnosis to death (Tangka et al., 2015). A generalized linear model was employed to address the inflated expenditures for cancer treatments and to estimate costs for cancers with a low data pool (Tangka et al., 2015). All the data was presented in tables comparing all of the outlined criteria for both Medicaid cancer and non-cancer

For many types of cancers, we have been using the same base drug (first line treatment) for ten years or even longer. As companies find new drugs to fight the cancers, they hope that it will be the miracle drug that will eradicate the cancer, but it usually isn’t. When they reach this conclusion, instead of returning to the chalkboard and continuing to work to improve the drug, they put the drug on the market as is, and hope it will achieve something. Not only are they putting these drugs on the market but they put price tags on them that would bankrupt anyone without some sort of third party payer. The combination of all of these drugs make up what doctors

I am primarily concerned about the impact that the excessive costs will be a burden on the patients. According to the PA House Republican Caucus, the cost of these oral chemotherapy medications accumulate to an outstanding $1,400-$3,500 out of pocket costs a month! Cancer patients are facing these cost burdens each day and without the bill being passed, patients are choosing to succumb to their disease, abandon treatment, and give up the fight in order to save their family from falling into debt due to the ongoing co-pays. Patients are genuinely choosing death instead of encouraging life because of these unaffordable pills. As a Community Health Educator, one of my most

Cancer is figured to be the second leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. With approximately 14 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer related deaths in 2012, alone .Why are so many people stuck suffering with this deadly disease? Millions of dollars have been invested into cancer research, yet there is no cure. Are these pharmaceutical companies focus on finding a cure for cancer or concentrating on elongated treatments in order to lengthen their pockets? We must first understand that cancer is big business earning huge profits. Nonetheless, the cancer industry is spending virtually zilch of its multi-billion dollar resources on effective prevention strategies, like dietary guidelines, exercise, natural remedies and herbs proven to cure cancer. Instead, it pours its money into treating cancer, not preventing or allaying it.

Cancer. We all know someone who has suffered from it or has passed away because of it. Cancer now affects one in every three people, and is the second highest cause of death in the United States. For decades, the medical community has been on the hunt for a cure for cancer, and have been subjected to intense ridicule from the public because of a lack of progression toward a possible cure. In recent years, many scientists, doctors, researchers, and the general public have come to believe that the cure for cancer is being suppressed because of this lack of progress. Those who say it is suppressed claim that the drugs used to treat cancer actually cause cancer, making a patient sicker and sicker. As a result, the patients are forced to spend

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide as it can develop in almost any organ or tissue. Significant advances in understanding the cellular basis of cancer and the underlying biological mechanisms of tumour has been vastly improved in the recent years (Jiang et al. 1994). Cancer is a genetic disease which requires a series of mutation during mitosis to develop, its characteristics can be associated with their ability to grow and divide abnormal cells uncontrollable while in the mean time invade and cause nearby blood vessels to serve its need. Even though many people are affected by cancer today, the abilities which cancer cells have make it hard to find a single effective treatment for cancer. The focus of research now lies