A team of 118 top cancer doctors, recently published an article and started a campaign calling on big pharmaceutical companies to lower the price of cancer treatment medications. According to these professionals, the huge costs of the medications are only attributable to the desire of corporations to make as much money as possible.
The head author of the paper, Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, a hematologist from the Mayo Clinic, exposed in the research how high drugs prices affect both the patients who need them, as well as the general health care system. On average, the common household in the U.S. has an income of about $52,000 a year. Even if a family has insurance, a treatment that costs around $120,000 per year, will leave the patient with debts for as much as $25,000 to $30,000. More than half the annual income of an average American family.
Also, in the article the doctors pointed out how the prices of cancer treatments increase every year. They estimated that the average price rising is of $8,500 annually since the year 2000.
The doctors proposed a legislation to allow Medicare to be able to directly negotiate with drug companies to lower their outrageous prices.
Surprisingly, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association rejected the arguments from the doctors and said that “cancer medicine represent only a fifth of total spending on cancer treatments”. They also alleged that lowering the costs of the medications will delay the development and innovation of cancer research.
These doctors are ‘cute’ to actually think BigPharma will take less money and have their Ferrari’s Repo’ed. Give up a yacht? Highly unlikely. Give up buying off politicians? BWAHAHAHAHAHAA!
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product on health care every year than any other country. Yet, the United States ranks 37th out of 191 countries in the WHO’s ranking of health care systems. It’s difficult to imagine any consumer spending that much more money on a product only to be handed something that ranks 37th in quality.
Rafael, I am not a defender of the drug industry, but you have to understand issues in order to fix them. The U.S. is ranked 37th primarily because our primary care system is not government controlled, and the access is not at all uniform.
Our specialized and critical systems are second to none. Proof of that is that people from the other 36 countries that “beat us” make a beeline to the U.S. for cancer treatment whenever they need it, and they certainly do not stay in their countries that “beat us”
Some of the reasons for our success in specialized treatment is availability of new drugs (developed in the U.S). highly trained and skilled physicians, and greater access to sophisticated medical devices.
One big problem that needs fixing is the fact that the rest of the world only respects a 5 year patent on new medicines, whereas the U.S. respects a 17 to 22 year patent so that developers will have an incentive to spend the 100’s of millions required to develop a new drug. The countries that only respect 5 years (almost all the others) then free-ride on us, by developing generics of the medications developed here that still cost us a bunch. This is an issue that needs fixing before we can reach a state of new drugs and more reasonable prices across the world.
There is nothing humanitarian about the Pharma “industry”. It’s job is to make money (period). There is nothing humanitarian about our health care industry. It’s job is to make money. (PERIOD). Money is the God our god.
So, people have donated billions to cancer research so that companies can take that research, create drugs, then rape them to reap the benefits of their donations?
Yes, thank you for playing.