All too sadly we are plagued by sicknesses which require medication. Enter the multi-national pharmaceutical companies developing drugs - and in the process, in effect, gouging governments and individuals to pay for the medication. It's a problem world wide!
Therefore, all power to the Mayo Clinic for throwing down the gauntlet to the pharma companies.
"Americans diagnosed with cancer are at risk of losing their life savings because cancer drug costs are escalating almost as fast as the worst forms of the disease, according to a Mayo Clinic medical journal article decrying these costs signed by scores of nationally known oncologists.
“In the United States, the average price of new cancer drugs increased 5- to 10-fold over 15 years, to more than $100,000 per year in 2012,” the article said. “The cost of drugs for each additional year lived (after adjusting for inflation) has increased from $54,000 in 1995 to $207,000 in 2013. This increase is causing harm to patients with cancer and their families.”
“Cancer is a very scary,” Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, the lead author, told NPR. “Everybody’s shocked. But they don’t know about the second shock coming, and that is the financial destruction that’s coming with it. That comes in the course of treatment. That comes after the patient dies. All of a sudden, they see that their lifelong savings is being given to drug companies.”
Tefferi blamed drug company greed, physicians who are too quick to prescribe new drugs without proven efficacy, health insurers willing to go along with pricing with upwards of $3,000-a-month co-pays, and a lack of federal government oversight adding checks and balances to a Wild West of drug pricing, especially for the federal health plan for seniors, Medicare, which is barred from negotiating drug prices. That prohibition was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003."
Therefore, all power to the Mayo Clinic for throwing down the gauntlet to the pharma companies.
"Americans diagnosed with cancer are at risk of losing their life savings because cancer drug costs are escalating almost as fast as the worst forms of the disease, according to a Mayo Clinic medical journal article decrying these costs signed by scores of nationally known oncologists.
“In the United States, the average price of new cancer drugs increased 5- to 10-fold over 15 years, to more than $100,000 per year in 2012,” the article said. “The cost of drugs for each additional year lived (after adjusting for inflation) has increased from $54,000 in 1995 to $207,000 in 2013. This increase is causing harm to patients with cancer and their families.”
“Cancer is a very scary,” Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, the lead author, told NPR. “Everybody’s shocked. But they don’t know about the second shock coming, and that is the financial destruction that’s coming with it. That comes in the course of treatment. That comes after the patient dies. All of a sudden, they see that their lifelong savings is being given to drug companies.”
Tefferi blamed drug company greed, physicians who are too quick to prescribe new drugs without proven efficacy, health insurers willing to go along with pricing with upwards of $3,000-a-month co-pays, and a lack of federal government oversight adding checks and balances to a Wild West of drug pricing, especially for the federal health plan for seniors, Medicare, which is barred from negotiating drug prices. That prohibition was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003."
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