Photo courtesy of the CDC
New orally administered cancer drugs are much more expensive in their first year on the market than such drugs launched about 15 years ago, according to a study published in JAMA Oncology.
The research showed that a month of treatment with orally administered cancer drugs introduced in 2014 was, on average, 6 times more expensive at launch than monthly treatment costs for such drugs introduced in 2000, after adjusting for inflation.
In addition, most existing therapies had substantial price increases from the time they were launched to 2014.
“The major trend here is that these products are just getting more expensive over time,” said study author Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For this study, Dr Dusetzina evaluated what commercial health insurance companies and patients paid for prescription fills—before rebates and discounts—for 32 orally administered cancer drugs from 2000 to 2014. The information came from the TruvenHealth MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters database.
The data showed that orally administered drugs approved in 2000 cost an average of $1869 (95% CI, $1648-$2121) per month, compared to $11,325 (95% CI, $10 989-$11 671) for those approved in 2014.
When Dr Dusetzina compared changes in spending by year from a product’s launch to 2014, she observed increases in most of the drugs studied.
The drugs with the largest increases in monthly spending were thalidomide, which increased from $1869 to $7564 ($5695) and imatinib, which increased from $3346 to $8479 ($5133).
However, 2 drugs showed decreases in mean monthly spending between their launch and 2014. Monthly spending for lenalidomide decreased from $10,109 to $9640 ($469), and monthly spending for vorinostat decreased from $9755 to $7592 ($2163).
Dr Dusetzina pointed out that the amount patients pay for these drugs depends on their healthcare benefits. However, the high prices are being passed along to patients more and more, potentially affecting the patients’ access to these drugs.
“Patients are increasingly taking on the burden of paying for these high-cost specialty drugs as plans move toward use of higher deductibles and co-insurance—where a patient will pay a percentage of the drug cost rather than a flat copay,” Dr Dusetzina said.
She noted that while this study did account for payments by commercial health plans, it did not account for spending by Medicaid and Medicare, which may differ. In addition, only the products that were dispensed and reimbursed by commercial health plans were included, which may have excluded rarely used or recently approved products.
