Cancer costs becoming unsustainable in many 1st world countries

[shortylickens]

The human body was simply not designed to live as long as we are trying force it to live.

Obviously you never lost a 22 year old cousin to breast cancer.

 

[senseamp]

Someone ("death panel") has to do a cost benefit analysis. $100K to extend a cancer patient's life by a few months should be a luxury, up to the patient to fund.

 

[JS80]

I do not think cancer treatment falls under a "free lunch" or even "getting everything we want." How about companies charging a reasonable price?

In a lot of cases, the government (tax payers) has helped fund the research and development of the drugs.

We get to pay for the drugs twice:

1 - government grants for R&D

2 - when someone needs the drugs

How is that supposed to work out? The drug companies are standing there with their hands out, we help pay the bill, and then get charged out the rear end at the hospital.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding

Scroll down to the chart under #4

Lung cancer - $281.9 billion
Prostate cancer - $300.5 billion
Breast cancer - $631.2 billion

Between those 3 cancers, the government gives out over 1 trillion dollars for cancer research.

Add all of the others cancers in, and you are probably in the 1.5 trillion dollar range. That is our tax dollars going to big pharma.




With the government already giving out over 1.5 trillion for cancer research, explain to me why treatments are so expensive?

You're off by $1.4985 trillion

 

[QuantumPion]

Profits > human compassion

How much is a life worth? The CEO of drug corp needs a good christmas bonus, so the price of that much needed cancer medicine just went up.

According to first-world socialized medicine, $50,000.

...insurance companies calculate that to make a treatment worth its cost, it must guarantee one year of "quality life" for $50,000 or less...Canada, Britain and the Netherlands — ration health care based on cost-effectiveness and the $50,000 threshold...

​

 

[Texashiker]

You're off by $1.4985 trillion

You are correct, the price s around the 1.5 billion, not 1.5 trillion.

Still, with 1.5 "billion" tax payer dollars going to cancer research, why are the medicines and treatments so expensive?

 

[werepossum]

I do not think cancer treatment falls under a "free lunch" or even "getting everything we want." How about companies charging a reasonable price?

In a lot of cases, the government (tax payers) has helped fund the research and development of the drugs.

We get to pay for the drugs twice:

1 - government grants for R&D

2 - when someone needs the drugs

How is that supposed to work out? The drug companies are standing there with their hands out, we help pay the bill, and then get charged out the rear end at the hospital.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding

Scroll down to the chart under #4

Lung cancer - $281.9 billion
Prostate cancer - $300.5 billion
Breast cancer - $631.2 billion

Between those 3 cancers, the government gives out over 1 trillion dollars for cancer research.

Add all of the others cancers in, and you are probably in the 1.5 trillion dollar range. That is our tax dollars going to big pharma.




With the government already giving out over 1.5 trillion for cancer research, explain to me why treatments are so expensive?

We do have a really screwed up system of funding medical research. Generally we donate tax money to research done jointly by a public university and a corporation. The university then owns the patent, which it sells to (usually) the same corporation. (The university has no use for the patent except to sell it, whereas the corporation wants a monopoly on that particular drug so that it can make back its investment with a profit.) However, with or without tax money, development of new drugs is extremely expensive. The low-hanging fruit is long gone, and extremely complicated isolation and synthesizing of complicated compounds is now the norm. Drug trials go on for years and are very expensive. Most compounds studied don't become drugs, and most drugs don't make it to market. Bottom line, this is all very, very expensive.

Government health care can cheapen this to a degree, but not without side effects. Don't do enough trials and you get thalidomide babies. That's why most single payer health care nations have ceded medical research to the USA.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

No. When a person reaches their end of life, let them pass with dignity, and as pain free as possible.

But, who gets to set the price tag?

Who get's to decide is certainly a difficult question. Now we have a combination of insurance companies, the government, and patients deciding. If we go to single payer the government will have all authority. If we go to a more market oriented system it would be a function of patient choice in choosing between different types of insurance and patient ability to pay for those different levels of coverage.

 

[Infohawk]

This is a problem with health care everywhere. We can spend unlimited resources trying to make people as healthy as possible and to live as long as possible. No matter what system in you're in, you have to have limits.

 

[Texashiker]

Who get's to decide is certainly a difficult question. <snip> If we go to a more market oriented system it would be a function of patient choice in choosing between different types of insurance and patient ability to pay for those different levels of coverage.

A couple of years ago my wife and I had a friend who died from lung cancer. She held onto hope until the very end. Instead of accepting her time and come, she wanted to try every treatment she doctors suggested.

Finally the doctors said there was nothing they could do and sent her home.


My grandfather on the other hand, he had a living will that instructed the hospital to not use any means of artificial life support. With the help of some morphine, he stayed comfortable the last few days of his life.


I think our culture teaches us death is something that we need to fight at all cost. Instead of accepting death, we want to use every means possible to stay alive.

Obviously you never lost a 22 year old cousin to breast cancer.

My wife and I know a lady who developed cervical cancer at the age of 23 or 24. It was caught soon enough, and the doctors were able to remove the cancer. But, she will never be able to have any more children.

There is a big difference between a 22 year old fighting cancer, and a 72 year old. At 72 you should have already lived your live and done everything that you wanted to do.

 

[Ausm]

Government health care can cheapen this to a degree, but not without side effects. Don't do enough trials and you get thalidomide babies. That's why most single payer health care nations have ceded medical research to the USA.

Yeah because we are dumb enough to foot the bill for everyone else who benefits off the research D:

 

[airdata]

The human body was simply not designed to live as long as we are trying force it to live.

While this is true, cancer treatments and meds are rediculous.

My dad is on disability as he's undergoing treatments and I forget the exact amount... but the medicine is ridiculously expensive.

 

[werepossum]

Yeah because we are dumb enough to foot the bill for everyone else who benefits off the research D:

One thing I'd like to see is a simple law that says a company cannot sell anything more cheaply out of the country than it does inside the country. Let every user amortize the cost, not just us.

As with everything, though, there is no free ride. That would encourage companies to build new production plants in other countries. One way to mitigate that would be for government rather than universities to hold partial ownership of any patent developed using tax money. That way, if the company manufactures the product outside of our country, we still get at least the tax revenue. Ideally government would also have some control over whether a new drug could be manufactured in other countries. Maybe then we'd get more bang for our buck.

The other downside is that very poor nations such as in Africa and much of Asia would not be able to afford to pay what we pay, so that would have to be somehow addressed. But we should not be in the position of subsidizing health care for nations with near-equal or even higher standards of living just to keep their costs down.

 

[QuantumPion]

One thing I'd like to see is a simple law that says a company cannot sell anything more cheaply out of the country than it does inside the country. Let every user amortize the cost, not just us.

That's a horrible idea. I don't think you've thought that through. Imagine what would happen if we passed a law saying movie producers must sell movies at the same price internationally as domestically.

 

[Engineer]

Expensive or not, every damn person here would be begging to try to get treatment if they had cancer, cost be damned. You can count on it.

The human body was simply not designed to live as long as we are trying force it to live.

Designed? :hmm:

 

[Texashiker]

That's a horrible idea. I don't think you've thought that through. Imagine what would happen if we passed a law saying movie producers must sell movies at the same price internationally as domestically.

I do not see an issue with it.

If countries in Africa can get their drugs at reduced rates, why cant people in wealthy nations?

 

[werepossum]

That's a horrible idea. I don't think you've thought that through. Imagine what would happen if we passed a law saying movie producers must sell movies at the same price internationally as domestically.

You do have a point. However, we need some method to fairly amortize the costs of drug R&D. Right now, drug companies are free to sell drugs to affluent but heavily regulated single payer health care systems at anything above manufacturing costs while we (the USA) bear the entire cost of the development. That's not right, and it's a huge drain on us. We can solve that to a very small degree by also becoming a single payer health care system, but that merely stops most research & development rather than forcing its costs on all its consumers.

 

[QuantumPion]

I do not see an issue with it.

If countries in Africa can get their drugs at reduced rates, why cant people in wealthy nations?

Countries in Africa could not afford the price of drugs that are mandated to be more expensive by the US government.

Instead of selling a drug for $1000/pill to the US and Europe and $1/pill to Africa and Asia, they would be forced to sell the pills at an average price of $900/pill to everybody (which Asia and Africa cannot afford).

 

[Doppel]

This is inevitable. Medical science continues to grow at astounding rates and as such cost more and more. Part of the reason it's been cheaper in the past is because there was simply much less to buy. Currently the rich get more or less the same treatment as all but the most impoverished. That will absolutely, unequivocally not be the case in the future and it will become more disparate.

That $100k treatment that buys a few months on the public dime is an obvious waste of money. But what if it were $5m and bought 5 years? And it worked on all cancers? Where would the money come from? It wouldn't. And we know that, and these questions cannot be dodged forever. This is bigger than universal healthcare or not.

 

[QuantumPion]

You do have a point. However, we need some method to fairly amortize the costs of drug R&D. Right now, drug companies are free to sell drugs to affluent but heavily regulated single payer health care systems at anything above manufacturing costs while we (the USA) bear the entire cost of the development. That's not right, and it's a huge drain on us. We can solve that to a very small degree by also becoming a single payer health care system, but that merely stops most research & development rather than forcing its costs on all its consumers.

The problem lies with the single payer health care systems. The problem, as usual, is government interference in the first place. Even more government interference is not going to make matters better.

 

[JSt0rm]

The human body was simply not designed to live as long as we are trying force it to live.

What medical background do you have to make such a sweeping statement?

 

[werepossum]

Countries in Africa could not afford the price of drugs that are mandated to be more expensive by the US government.

Instead of selling a drug for $1000/pill to the US and Europe and $1/pill to Africa and Asia, they would be forced to sell the pills at an average price of $900/pill to everybody (which Asia and Africa cannot afford).

I don't disagree with the practice of selling pills that are $1 in Africa and $1,000 in America. I disagree with the practice of selling pills that are $1 in Norway and Sweden and $1,000 in America.

The problem lies with the single payer health care systems. The problem, as usual, is government interference in the first place. Even more government interference is not going to make matters better.

I don't disagree with that, but the end effect of free market medicine is sick and dead people. Churches and charities have limited means and cannot fund expensive things like cancer treatments for very many people. Health care without some government interference results in some people sickening and dieing for lack of resources who would otherwise recover and remain productive members of society. A case can be made that society as a whole would be more productive and wealthy under a system like this, with unhealthy people dieing off - although that's far from conclusive since many things that can kill you are not inheritable and easily cured with the proper treatment. But in my opinion a stronger case can be made for the morality of accepting the drag (if any) on society and treating everyone, or as close as is practical. I'm a big proponent of wealth creating being very important to a society, but it's not the only or necessarily even the most important thing.

 

[JS80]

You are correct, the price s around the 1.5 billion, not 1.5 trillion.

Still, with 1.5 "billion" tax payer dollars going to cancer research, why are the medicines and treatments so expensive?

Because it takes a lot more than $1.5 billion in public funding to develop treatments and medicines?

 

[QuantumPion]

I don't disagree with that, but the end effect of free market medicine is sick and dead people.

What do you suppose the end effect of socialism, with no first world capitalist country to prop them up, would be? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. There is currently not enough wealth on the planet to provide every single human being top level health care. You can either compromise on the side of freedom, or the side of tyranny. I know which I'd prefer.

 

[dmcowen674]

No. When a person reaches their end of life, let them pass with dignity, and as pain free as possible.

But, who gets to set the price tag?

Who gets to say a person has reached end of life? You

 

[khon]

The answer here is pretty simple: You get the newest treatments/drugs if you can afford them, otherwise you do not.

Meanwhile most people get the affordable options, and that's it.

For some reason this idea is considered radical, even though we do the exact same thing with everything else. For example, we try to make sure everyone has a place to live, but we don't expect everyone to live in a mansion. And we try to make sure everyone has something to eat, but we don't expect it to be lobster and caviar.

There's simply no way everyone can get the absolute best. And I don't understand why some people think health care would be an exception to that rule ?