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The $10,000-a-month cancer drug has become the new normal, to the dismay of physicians and patients who increasingly face the burden of financial toxicity. A pair of new studies illustrate just how recently that pricing model has come into vogue and pull back the curtain on the strange market forces that push prices steadily higher in the years after the treatments are launched. The first study, published in JAMA Oncology, examined 32 cancer medications given in pill form and found that their initial launch list prices have steadily increased over the years — even after adjusting for inflation. (Johnson, 5/2)

The cost of new oral cancer medicines is rising no matter how you slice it. Between 2007 and 2013, these pills increased in cost 5 percent each year, and rose another 10 percent when regulators approved additional uses for the drugs, according to a new study in the May issue of Health Affairs. Moreover, the introduction of rival treatments had only a modest effect on cost — generating a decline of about 2 percent. In other words, competition did not do very much to keep a lid on costs. (Silverman, 5/2)

Two new studies on the price of cancer drugs add to the mounting pile of bad news for the patients and insurers. Prices aren’t dropping and they also aren’t achieving the health outcomes the prices seem to call for. Both studies appear in the May edition of Health Affairs. The first study shows that the price of oral cancer drugs recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration increased 5 percent each year between 2007 and 2013. This undermines the argument that even though cancer drugs are expensive when they are introduced, competition reduces the price over time. ... The second study examined cancer drug spending and its health impact in the United Stats and eight other advanced countries. (Owens, 5/2)

The cost of prescription painkillers has been gradually decreasing for patients, with a growing share of the costs now covered by insurers, according to new research. That shift over the last decade could be partly responsible for the dramatic increase in the use of the powerful, and increasingly deadly, drugs, according to a study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs. The average out-of-pocket price for 100 milligrams of morphine plummeted to 90 cents in 2012, down from $4.40 in 2001. (Ferris, 5/3)