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The pushback against soaring cancer drug prices is gaining steam. A leading doctors group on Monday proposed a formula to help patients decide if a medicine is worth it — what it will cost them and how much good it is likely to do. The move by the American Society of Clinical Oncology is the third recent effort to focus on value in cancer care. Two weeks ago, the European Society for Medical Oncology proposed a similar guide. Last week, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York posted an online tool suggesting a drug's fair price, based on benefits and side effects. (6/22)

A leading oncology group has developed a formula designed to help doctors and patients weigh the value of cancer treatments, in the latest example of rising concern over the price of new drugs. The American Society of Clinical Oncology published Monday a template for assessing new treatments based on the benefits and side effects seen in clinical trials and on the cost for individual patients. The formula is an initial step toward producing software-based tools that doctors and patients can use in deciding among treatment options for the disease, ASCO said. (Winslow, 6/22)

In a bid to inject clarity into the fast-moving, high-stakes world of cancer drugs, a task force of cancer doctors announced Monday that it has devised a decision-making aid to help physicians and their patients weigh the pluses and minuses of newly available options for treating malignancy, including their costs. In a trial run of the proposed system, which distills a single "net health benefit" number for cancer drugs, several costly new medications fared poorly. Others, despite high costs, appeared to offer major returns for patients with few effective options. (Healy, 6/22)