8 October 2015 - U.S. oncologists, aware that patients are paying more of the costs of expensive cancer drugs, are increasingly declining to prescribe medicines that have scant or no effect, even as a last resort.

At least half a dozen drugs, including colon cancer treatments Cyramza, from Eli Lilly & Co, and Stivarga, sold by Bayer AG, aren't worth prices that can exceed $100,000 a year, top cancer specialists said in interviews with Reuters.

If specialists do start considering a drug's cost in their prescribing habits, such decisions could dent the multibillion-dollar cancer drug business of companies from Roche Holding AG to Celgene Corp. Worldwide spending on cancer medicines reached $100 billion in 2014, a year-over-year jump of more than 10 percent.

For more details, go to: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/08/us-usa-healthcare-cancer-insight-idUSKCN0S20DG20151008