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From the CBC
A revolutionary new cancer treatment is now available in Canada, but provinces are being advised not to cover it until the price comes down — a price that is being kept secret from Canadians.
Health Canada approved Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) in September. It's a form of CAR-T immunotherapy, in which a patient's blood cells are removed, reprogrammed to attack cancer and then re-injected back into their body.
For the first time ever, some Canadians with specific forms of hard-to-treat leukemia and lymphoma can be treated with this therapy. If their doctors decide they're candidates, they won't have to wait to be accepted into a clinical trial.
But that approval created a Rubik's Cube of decision-making problems: How to pay for a treatment so expensive that something else in the health care budget will have to be dropped, a treatment so new that there is no long-term survival data, a treatment so complex that some regions don't have the facilities to offer it?
COMMENT:-
The treatment appears to cost between $300,000 and $500,000 per patient and there appears to be fewer than 3 patients per 100,000 who would benefit from it.
Admittedly this question would never arise in the United States of America because anyone who could raise the (let's call it) $400,000 required to pay for the treatment (plus the additional hospital and medical personnel costs) would be able to receive it. (Of course, any Canadian who could raise the "$400,000" [plus the additional hospital and medical personnel costs] to pay for the treatment could be able to receive it too simply going to the United States of America.) Whether or not VA, Medicare, and/or private insurance companies will pay for this treatment in the US will be decided by "coverage and benefit analysts" (who are NOT to be confused with "Death Panels").
PS - With approximately 10,000 potential patients - right now - in the US, the treatment would return around $4,000,000,000 if all those patients were treated. That $4,000,000,000 should defray the R&D costs "slightly" and then there would only be the number of new cases that arose annually that would have to be treated.
PPS - The treatment does not appear to actually "cure" anything, only to provide a 50% to 80% chance of living for another year so that makes me wonder if the treatment would actually have to be administered annually.
Will price be a barrier to new cancer immunotherapy?
A revolutionary new cancer treatment is now available in Canada, but provinces are being advised not to cover it until the price comes down — a price that is being kept secret from Canadians.
Health Canada approved Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) in September. It's a form of CAR-T immunotherapy, in which a patient's blood cells are removed, reprogrammed to attack cancer and then re-injected back into their body.
For the first time ever, some Canadians with specific forms of hard-to-treat leukemia and lymphoma can be treated with this therapy. If their doctors decide they're candidates, they won't have to wait to be accepted into a clinical trial.
But that approval created a Rubik's Cube of decision-making problems: How to pay for a treatment so expensive that something else in the health care budget will have to be dropped, a treatment so new that there is no long-term survival data, a treatment so complex that some regions don't have the facilities to offer it?
COMMENT:-
The treatment appears to cost between $300,000 and $500,000 per patient and there appears to be fewer than 3 patients per 100,000 who would benefit from it.
Admittedly this question would never arise in the United States of America because anyone who could raise the (let's call it) $400,000 required to pay for the treatment (plus the additional hospital and medical personnel costs) would be able to receive it. (Of course, any Canadian who could raise the "$400,000" [plus the additional hospital and medical personnel costs] to pay for the treatment could be able to receive it too simply going to the United States of America.) Whether or not VA, Medicare, and/or private insurance companies will pay for this treatment in the US will be decided by "coverage and benefit analysts" (who are NOT to be confused with "Death Panels").
PS - With approximately 10,000 potential patients - right now - in the US, the treatment would return around $4,000,000,000 if all those patients were treated. That $4,000,000,000 should defray the R&D costs "slightly" and then there would only be the number of new cases that arose annually that would have to be treated.
PPS - The treatment does not appear to actually "cure" anything, only to provide a 50% to 80% chance of living for another year so that makes me wonder if the treatment would actually have to be administered annually.