How to Make a Dent in Crazy-High Drug Prices
Some of the most expensive medicines are among the least effective. Why does that make sense?
Will it work?
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesThere’s no good reason to pay a lot for prescription drugs that don’t work well. But that’s what lots of Americans are doing.
Some drug prices far outweigh any reasonable measure of the drug’s benefit. This is frequently the case for new cancer therapies. For example, the cancer drug Erbitux costs about $10,000 per month and extends life by an average of about three months when used to treat patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck. And the launch price of new cancer drugs is going up 12 percent a year even though the drugs aren’t getting commensurately better. In one recent estimate, the cost of extending a cancer patient’s life by one year is increasing by $8,500 every year.