Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Top Oncologists Push Back On 'Outrageous' Costs Of Cancer Drugs
As complaints grow about exorbitant drug prices, pharmaceutical companies are coming under pressure to disclose the development costs and profits of those medicines and the rationale for charging what they do. So-called pharmaceutical cost transparency bills have been introduced in at least six state legislatures in the last year, aiming to make drug companies justify their prices, which are often attributed to high research and development costs. (Pollack, 7/23)
More than 100 oncologists from top cancer hospitals around the U.S. have issued a harsh rebuke over soaring cancer-drug prices and called for new regulations to control them. The physicians are the latest in a growing roster of objectors to drug prices. Critics from doctors to insurers to state Medicaid officials have voiced alarm about prescription drug prices, which rose more than 12% last year in the U.S., the biggest annual increase in a decade, according to the nation鈥檚 largest pharmacy-benefit manager. (Whalen, 7/23)
Top cancer experts called Thursday for steps to curb the rapidly escalating price of oncology drugs, warning that the current trajectory 鈥渨ill affect millions of Americans and their immediate families, often repeatedly.鈥 The commentary in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, signed by 118 physicians from cancer centers across the country, cited startling, if now familiar, evidence of the dramatic rise in cancer-drug prices. (Bernstein, 7/23)
A group of 118 leading cancer experts have developed a list of proposals designed to reduce the cost of cancer drugs, and support a grassroots patient protest movement to pressure drug companies to charge what they deem a fair value for treatments. The experts include former presidents of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Society of Hematology. (Steenhuysen, 7/23)
More than 100 of the country鈥檚 most prominent cancer doctors are calling for a mass mobilization of patients to fight the escalating cost of new cancer drugs, which are routinely topping $100,000 a year. (Norman, 7/23)
