22 September 2015 - There’s a mounting crusade to impose price controls on prescription pharmaceuticals. Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have called for deep price discounts for drugs sold through Medicare, importation of drugs from countries like Canada that have price controls, and limiting drug companies’ marketing exclusivity rights. “Cancer treatment shouldn’t bankrupt patients” is the gist of their emotional argument.

That politicians with no medical training or business experience would have a myopic understanding of drug pricing is unsurprising. But such misconceptions also afflict leading cancer specialists.

An Aug. 27 article in JAMA Oncology by several oncologists from Emory University and public-health experts concludes that a “reasonable price” for treating lung cancer patients for three weeks with necitumumab, a new drug under development, should be no more than $1,309. That’s what the authors judge to be the value of the two-month life extension the drug seems on average to confer. Typically, new cancer drugs cost several thousand dollars a month. Physician advocates for price controls have seized on this difference.

For more details, go to: http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-cancer-doctors-dont-know-about-cancer-drugs-1442961874