In an unusual move, a top-level cancer physician delivered a speech criticizing the prices of chemotherapy drugs. Leonard Saltz, MD, chief of gastrointestinal oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, stated that these drugs cost too much.
Saltz gave his speech to thousands of other cancer specialists at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology in Chicago. He spoke about the prices of chemotherapy drugs in general and specifically about a combination of drugs from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
Earlier in the day, research was presented that showed that a regimen of two Bristol-Myers drugs, Yervoy and Opdiva, significantly lengthened the lives of patients with melanoma, an advance that Saltz noted in his speech. But the two drugs, both of which have been approved for use in melanoma individually, costs about $295,000 for an average sized adult patient for one year of use.
In his speech, Saltz noted that the median monthly price for new cancer drugs in the United States more than doubled from 2000 - 2004 to 2010 - 2014. The median price went from $4,716 to approximately $9,900 in inflation-adjusted dollars. At the same time, the effectiveness of drugs have not increased, he pointed out.
"Cancer-drug prices are not related to the value of the drug," Saltz said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "Prices are based on what has come before and what the seller believes the market will bear." He called on the industry, physicians, and health insurance companies to work on addressing the issue of high-priced oncology drugs.
The findings of many large studies of chemotherapy drugs are announced each year at the ASCO annual meeting. It is a meeting that is heavily funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
There has been other criticism of pricing for oncology drugs in recent years, according to FiercePharma.com, but this speech was made by a prominent oncologist at a prominent cancer center at one of the most important medical meetings of the year.
