Efforts to Protest High Cancer Drug
Prices Underway
Strategies to combat high prices exist, but have long road to success
There is an inconvenient truth when it comes to
the cost of new cancer therapies in the United
States: The median U.S. household income from
2009 to 2013 was $53,046, according to the
United States Census Bureau,1 but many of the
most recently approved anti-cancer treatments
approved by the United States Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) are priced well above
$100,000 per year. The average American with
cancer can do the math and come to the same
conclusion that some oncology experts are
coming to: Cancer drugs are priced too high.
“In my clinic, two out of five patients with
leukemia are having problems with affording drugs for treatment, so they compromise
on their treatment or don’t take it at all,” said
Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD, professor and
chair of F