The Cancer Cost and Money Management
As everyone is acutely aware, the cost of healthcare continues to rise and the cost of cancer care is rising at the rate of approximately 15% annually.
A universal healthcare system will have to address this and will have to ration care based on some criteria.
New drugs and related drug combination therapies that have improved outcomes and reduced side effects but have brought the cost of cancer care to more than $72 billion in 2004.
Cancer treatment is somewhat unique because there’s no magic bullet and just because you have lung cancer or breast cancer doesn’t mean you take drug A or drug B for a certain duration and then you’re done.
In today’s healthcare environment, patients can have a multitude of different therapies which becomes very expensive.
Every major insurer, from the federal government to any private payer is struggling with trying to manage the cost and complexity of oncology care.
More and more actuarials are beginning to use of cost effectiveness and cost-benefit studies because it is the only economic tool that can help answer the question if whether these additional costs worth it.
One such example of this type of information is with the drug docetaxel, which, when added to the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, adds approximately $2,400 for every additional month of life a patient receives.
With this piece of information, you can than have frank discussions about whether it is worth it, and that is not an easy call.
Insurance companies can and do make decisions about what it will or won’t pay for, but ultimately, it’s the oncologists who are in charge of the therapy for their patients and this becomes the problem.
A group of approximately 180 oncologists in 11 physician groups are beginning to submit information, including chemotherapy planning, chemotherapy-related side effects, pain assessment and control, and specific measures related to the management of colon and rectal cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and lung cancer, to a national database to help the physicians identify what works best in cancer care.
One piece of information the oncologists will receive back is the percentage of their patients who receive chemotherapy within the last 2 weeks of life. On group of oncologists from an academic medical center came in at 86 percent on this item and it prompted them to ask themselves whether or not they were providing care that was really in the patients’ best interest just 2 weeks prior to death.
Having this type of information can change how we manage patient’s treatment.
As physicians, we are to first do no harm, but our treatment in an attempt to prolong life may actually not be in the patient or family’s best interest.
Sometimes, we need to help our patients prepare for death because even the best physicians can only prolong life.
A universal healthcare system will have to address this and will have to ration care based on some criteria.
New drugs and related drug combination therapies that have improved outcomes and reduced side effects but have brought the cost of cancer care to more than $72 billion in 2004.
Cancer treatment is somewhat unique because there’s no magic bullet and just because you have lung cancer or breast cancer doesn’t mean you take drug A or drug B for a certain duration and then you’re done.
In today’s healthcare environment, patients can have a multitude of different therapies which becomes very expensive.
Every major insurer, from the federal government to any private payer is struggling with trying to manage the cost and complexity of oncology care.
More and more actuarials are beginning to use of cost effectiveness and cost-benefit studies because it is the only economic tool that can help answer the question if whether these additional costs worth it.
One such example of this type of information is with the drug docetaxel, which, when added to the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, adds approximately $2,400 for every additional month of life a patient receives.
With this piece of information, you can than have frank discussions about whether it is worth it, and that is not an easy call.
Insurance companies can and do make decisions about what it will or won’t pay for, but ultimately, it’s the oncologists who are in charge of the therapy for their patients and this becomes the problem.
A group of approximately 180 oncologists in 11 physician groups are beginning to submit information, including chemotherapy planning, chemotherapy-related side effects, pain assessment and control, and specific measures related to the management of colon and rectal cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and lung cancer, to a national database to help the physicians identify what works best in cancer care.
One piece of information the oncologists will receive back is the percentage of their patients who receive chemotherapy within the last 2 weeks of life. On group of oncologists from an academic medical center came in at 86 percent on this item and it prompted them to ask themselves whether or not they were providing care that was really in the patients’ best interest just 2 weeks prior to death.
Having this type of information can change how we manage patient’s treatment.
As physicians, we are to first do no harm, but our treatment in an attempt to prolong life may actually not be in the patient or family’s best interest.
Sometimes, we need to help our patients prepare for death because even the best physicians can only prolong life.
Labels: cancer, cost, healthcare
posted by Anonymous at 5:42 AM
3 Comments:
Do you think the cost of docetaxel is worth the benefit?
I am curious whether the cost of the Docetaxel drug encompasses money spent on research and development, as well as its production cost, or if it just costs that much to make the drug. The question of whether the cost is worth the benefit is a very difficult one, and likely depends on one's perspective. If its your wife, child or parent, then I'm sure there is no cost too great for another month...
I recently read that the margin of profit for antibiotics is very low, so many pharmaceutical companies are not spending their research and development dollars on antibiotics, choosing instead to focus on the development of more expensive drugs. It led me to wonder whether we'll see a day when most of the current antibiotics have lost their efficiency due to resistance, without a new line of drugs to follow.
All very good thoughts and questions.
Cost vs. benefit is key to nearly every decision. The cost of this drug is not primarily production cost but mostly R & D and profit related.
Antibiotic resistance is increasing and we will see harder to treat germs as we proceed with fewer choices of treatment for the very reasons mentioned.
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