Laura Beil, writing in Newsweek (a couple weeks ago), asks an intriguing and important question. How much would you pay for an extra three months of life?
She asks this question as she examines an array of new cancer treatments that are phenomenally expensive and show little average benefit. On the cost side is the problem pharmaceutical companies have no reason to price their drugs cheaply and lots of reasons for high prices -- the GOP made sure the gov't medical programs pay whatever price the drug companies set.
On the benefit side, these drugs don't work for everyone. Sometimes there is no effect at all. But it isn't possible (yet) to tell who they will help and who they won't without spending the money.
There are two holes in the article, one of which bothered me, but didn't understand clearly until a letter in a later issue spelled it out. $120,000 is a lot to spend on a skin cancer treatment for an average of another four months of life. But the article only talks about averages. If my math is correct, that could mean 20 people who weren't helped by the drug and lived only one more month and one person who lived another five years. For that one person, $120,000 might seem like a worthwhile expense. Once there is screening for those who won't be helped, this won't sound so scary. Then again, the article only gave averages, not a highest value, which could be only six months.
The other hole is from the online comments. Yeah, the patient may get another four months, but at what quality of life? Hale and hearty? Or confined to bed from the pain? The article doesn't say.
Even with the holes, the question and discussion is worth having. Alas, politicians aren't having it.
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