BLOGGERS: MARK SCHOLZ, MD & RALPH H. BLUM

The co-authors of Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers, blog alternate posts weekly. We invite you to post your comments.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

High Cost of Pharmaceutical Agents

MARK SCHOLZ, MD

In the last five years the prostate cancer world has been blessed with some incredible pharmacetucal breakthroughs--Zytiga, Xofigo, Xtandi, Provenge and Jevtana, just to name a few.  All these new medications are proven to prolong life and improve quality of life.  In my day to day life practicing as a prostate oncologist, I have seen with my own eyes how these new medications have transformed "hopeless" situations into genuine cancer remissions.

The extremely high cost of these new pharmaceutical agents, however, is a hot topic that I have addressed in prevous blogs. A recent editorial  from the Wall Street Journal addresses this issue with uncommon wisdom and aptly points out how potentially dangerous seemingly well-intentioned efforts to control costs can end up snuffing out the new drug development process.

Please click on the link HERE to read this short and extremely well-written editorial: http://goo.gl/F7pG8w



 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is a well-written article. I'm curious as to why there is no reference to "buy and bill". How does that fall into all of this? Yes, in a perfect world, all cancer drugs would be affordable to patients. At the same time, why should oncologists profit from them too?