Well over 100 cancer doctors from top cancer hospitals across the United States have issued what the Wall Street Journal‘s Jeanne Whalen referred to in a report as “a harsh rebuke” over the soaring cost of cancer drugs.
The group of oncologists, which consisted of 118 cancer experts, produced a series of recommendations which they claim will lead to reduced treatment costs, according to an editorial published July 23 in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, a hematologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said in a news release that the high cost of cancer drugs is “affecting the care of patients with cancer and our health care system,” HealthDay News reported.
Tefferi, who is among those behind the recommendations recently published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, went on to explain that while the average U.S. household has a gross income of roughly $52,000 a year, “the out-of-pocket expenses could be as much as $25,000 to $30,000” for an insured patient in need of a cancer drug that costs $120,000 a year.
The average gross household income in the U.S. is about $52,000 per year. For an insured patient with cancer who needs a drug that costs $120,000 per year, the out-of-pocket expenses could be as much as $25,000 to $30,000 — more than half their average household income (…) When you consider that cancer will affect one in three individuals over their lifetime, and [with] recent trends in insurance coverage (that) put a heavy financial burden on patients with out-of-pocket expenses, you quickly see that the situation is not sustainable (…) It’s time for patients and their physicians to call for change.
Cancer will affect one in three individuals over their lifetime, are you concerned you could be one of them?
