ObamaCare Rationing: FDA Considers Denying Leading Cancer Drugby Publius
From the Washington Post:
The FDA is not supposed to consider costs in its decisions, but if the agency rescinds approval, insurers are likely to stop paying for treatment.
“It’s hard to talk about Avastin without talking about costs,” said Eric P. Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “For better or worse, Avastin has become in many ways the poster child of high-priced anti-cancer drugs.”
Avastin is the world’s best-selling cancer drug, with global sales of $5.8 billion, and it is the top-selling product for Roche, whose Genentech unit makes it. Its use to treat breast cancer brings in about $855 million in annual revenue in the United States.
Avastin is approved for use in treating several cancers, including those of the colon, lung, kidney and brain. So doctors could continue to write prescriptions for it for breast cancer, as an “off-label” use. But in addition to prompting insurers including Medicare to stop paying for Avastin, an FDA revocation of approval for its use in breast cancer treatment might mean that breast cancer patients would lose eligibility for a program in which Genentech caps the annual cost of the drug at $57,000 for women with annual incomes of less than $100,000.
Avastin was the first drug designed to fight cancer by blocking blood flow to tumors, which has been hailed as one of the first significant innovations in decades in the war on cancer. But Avastin is also one of the most expensive of a new generation of anti-cancer medications that only eke out a few extra months of life.
Read the whole thing here. Before Big Government wrote on this issue, the FDA was trying to argue that Avastin wasn’t “clinically meaningful.” After our posts, even the Washington Post admits that the real issue is about trimming costs. These are the ‘death panels’ Sarah Palin mentioned. This story provides a glimpse into our future.
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