Cancer Drugs-Cost Versus Benefit the New Paradigm
Recently, both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have published articles about oncologists' new consumer tool to gauge the effectiveness of cancer drugs. This effort was spurred after harsh rebukes of the pharmaceutical industry from clinicians at the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School. Both of the "Times" articles cite information from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) article, which ranked cancer fighting drugs from 2009 through 2013 for effectiveness and cost. (1) Oncologists have embraced this new consumer decision aide as it provides health care purchasers and their families with another basis for decision making. And, as it often turns out, the most expensive medication is not necessarily the most effective. Using a scale of 0 to 130 rating system, the cancer drug treatments are ranked for efficacy. Here are the most expensive oncology medications, based on the analysis of experts at JAMA in this study, costs are expressed annual...