Posted by Michael Wonder on 11 Feb 2019
Medicare patients face surging costs for some life-saving drugs
11 February 2019 - Medicare patients with serious illnesses pay an astounding amount of out-of-pocket costs for their prescription drugs, according to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Consider patients suffering from hepatitis C who are taking Zepatier. They pay a median annual price of $2,622 out-of-pocket for that medicine. And that's the low end. People suffering from prostate cancer pay $8,181 for Zytiga. And leukaemia patients being treated with Idhifa rack up $16,551 a year for their share of that drug's price.
"Prices like that are simply unaffordable for most all Medicare recipients," said Juliette Cubanski, associate director of the Program on Medicare Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation and the study's co-author.
