Company raises price of 60-year-old cancer drug by 607%

[kurth]

March 12, 2006
A Cancer Drug's Big Price Rise Disturbs Doctors and Patients
By ALEX BERENSON

On Feb. 3, Joyce Elkins filled a prescription for a two-week supply of nitrogen mustard, a decades-old cancer drug used to treat a rare form of lymphoma. The cost was $77.50. On Feb. 17, Ms. Elkins, a 64-year-old retiree who lives in Georgetown, Tex., returned to her pharmacy for a refill. This time, following a huge increase in the wholesale price of the drug, the cost was $548.01. Ms. Elkins's insurance does not cover nitrogen mustard, which she must take for at least the next six months, at a cost that will now total nearly $7,000. She and her husband, who works for the Texas Department of Transportation, are paying for the medicine by spending less on utilities and food, she said...

The increase has stunned doctors, who say it starkly illustrates two trends in the pharmaceutical industry: The soaring price of cancer medicines and the tendency for those prices to have little relation to the cost of developing or making the drugs.

Genentech, for example, has indicated it will effectively double the price of its colon cancer drug Avastin, to about $100,000, when Avastin's use is expanded to breast and lung cancer patients. As with Avastin, nothing about nitrogen mustard is changing but the price.

"Nitrogen mustard has been around forever," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "There's nothing that I am aware of in the treatment environment that I am aware of that would explain an increase in the cost of the drug." Nitrogen mustard, also known as Mustargen, was developed more than 60 years ago and is among the oldest chemotherapy drugs...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/business/12price.html

[LostinVA]

1. WSickening... health should not be tied to a bottom line -- we need an NHS

[pitohui]

2. since she lives in texas and is retired so have time to boot

for way less than $7K she can just take a vacation and buy the drug in mexico, i've done the same in uninsured days gone by

this doesn't solve the problem for everyone, we need strict price controls on drugs here in usa as they have in many other nations, but whiile we are waiting this idea could save her life right now today since in reality you can't cut back on food and find $7K in the budget in only 6 months unless you're dining on caviar to begin with