By Liz Szabo
Sophisticated drugs are opening the door, scientists say, to an era of "precision medicine."
They're also ushering in an age of astronomical prices.
New cancer drugs are routinely priced at more than $100,000 a year — nearly twice the average household income.
Experimental cholesterol drugs — widely predicted to be approved this summer — could cost $10,000 a year
A drug for a subset of people of cystic fibrosis, a lung disease that kills most patients by their early 40s, commands more than $300,000 a year.
Even with insurance, patients might pay thousands of dollars a month out of pocket.
For many people, care for cancer and other serious diseases is "a doorway to bankruptcy or poverty," said Timothy Turnham, executive director of the Melanoma Research Foundation. "It's a tremendous economic burden."
But patients aren't the only ones paying.
Taxpayers underwrite the cost of prescription drugs provided by Medicare, Medicaid and other public insurance programs.
Spending on prescription drugs last year reached a record-breaking $374 billion, up 13% from 2013, with the largest percentage increase in more than a decade, said Clare Krusing, spokeswoman for America's Health Insurance Plans. Almost half of that increase came from drugs launched in the past two years.
Some of the most expensive medications are "breakthrough" drugs, which are fast tracked by the Food and Drug Administration because of their potential to fill an unmet need, she said. Over the next decade, just 10 of these breakthrough drugs will cost the government nearly $50 billion.
People with private insurance could find themselves paying more out-of-pocket for health care if insurers raise premiums to cover their costs, Krusing said.
"We're spending money we cannot afford," said Leonard Saltz, chief of gastrointestinal oncology at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Yet Saltz said he can't deny that some new drugs are game changers.
"I want these drugs and drugs like them available for my patients," Saltz said.
The cystic fibrosis drug, Kalydeco, has changed 33-year-old Emily Schaller's life. Before Kalydeco, Schaller was hospitalized for lung infections two to three times a year. Since beginning the drug five years ago, through a clinical trial, she's been hospitalized twice. Schaller, who lives in Detroit, receives Kalydeco through Michigan's state-run health insurance program.
"It's a miracle drug," Schaller said. "I'm now planning a retirement fund, which is something I never thought would need."
Yet miracles remain out of reach for many.
Even patients with insurance can have trouble affording their medication, Saltz said. Many insurance plans require patients to pay 20% of their prescription drug costs.
Some cancer patients have begun rationing their pills to reduce costs, taking them every two days instead of daily, said Ronan Kelly, an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore.
"If we don't get some sanity in these drug prices, more people will die from cancer because no one will be able to afford them," said Saltz, who addressed high drug prices at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/06/14/rising-drug-prices/71077100/
