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Doctors Tried To Lower $148K Cancer Drug Cost; Makers Tripled Its Price (arstechnica.com)
Slashdot reader Applehu Akbar writes: Imbruvica, a compound that treats white blood cell cancers, has until now been a bargain at $148,000 per year. Until now, doctors have been able to optimize dosage for each patient by prescribing up to four small-dose pills of it per day.
But after results from a recent small pilot trial indicated that smaller doses would for most patients work as well as the large ones, its manufacturer, Janssen and Pharmacyclics, has decided on the basis of the doctors' interest in smaller dosages to reprice all sizes of the drug to the price of the largest size. This has the effect of tripling the price for patients, and doctors have now put off any plans for further testing of lower dosages.
The researchers are retaliating by urging clinical investigators to test whether the expensive pill could be safely given every other day -- and by calling on America's public health regulators to investigate the drug's pricing.
But after results from a recent small pilot trial indicated that smaller doses would for most patients work as well as the large ones, its manufacturer, Janssen and Pharmacyclics, has decided on the basis of the doctors' interest in smaller dosages to reprice all sizes of the drug to the price of the largest size. This has the effect of tripling the price for patients, and doctors have now put off any plans for further testing of lower dosages.
The researchers are retaliating by urging clinical investigators to test whether the expensive pill could be safely given every other day -- and by calling on America's public health regulators to investigate the drug's pricing.
When you buy a drug, you aren't paying for the production of pills, but rather the R&D. If the dose is cut to one quarter, the cost of the R&D is spread across far fewer pills, so of course the price needs to go up to recoup the development cost.
Perhaps you could also tell us what proportion of the 'development costs' are in fact, profits.
Without profits, there is no incentive to do any R&D. Pharmaceutical companies are not charities.
Look at it this way: The dose was cut to a quarter, but the cost was only tripled. So the cost per "cure" actually went down by 25%.
Please, won't someone think of the corporations?
you can't even fathom someone doing research without corporate sponsorship.
I can indeed fathom someone doing a bit of front-end R&D without corporate funding. What I cannot fathom is someone paying tens or hundreds of millions for a clinical trial.
It's robbed you of imagination.
Sorry, I guess I was distracted by paying too much attention to reality.