As a cancer warrior, one who requires 32 pills a day multiply 2 times a day (yes that is 64 total) I worry daily about the rising cost of prescriptions or the upcoming moral issue of prescribing them or not to a patient!
Jeanne Sather of Seattle, who is fighting metastasis breast cancer, orders her cancer drug, Tykerb, though the mail. Every time the small package arrives with her three-month supply of pills, she says, "I look at that little box, and it's just hard to believe that I'm holding $10,000 worth of medicine. (AARP, Oct 2008).
This issue of health care hits home even closer for myself. My cousin Maureen, now retired after working as a top educator for over 26 years within the California Public School System was in the middle of planning out her retirement, browsing through the beautiful full color tour magazines, marking her five-star dream vacations with her special yellow paper clips, writing her notes, arranging her savings to meet the payment deadlines for each of these marvelous and very deserved adventures would take place. This was her second chance on life, the new Maureen disrobing from the Catholic uniform and replacing the black patent leather pumps with her favorite walking shoes. She had often day dreamed while correcting endless piles of student work papers of all her future trips abroad, life was good.
However, as the ocean tide changes so does the tides of life. Maureen was diagnosed suddenly with a disease that now has taken her future plans and placed them on the stove turned down to low so it does not even muster a head of steam while her emerging disease has to be placed on the front burner and demands to be placed on high for a sure red-hot boil.
Now not only saddled with the worries of staying a live, but to master a balanced health, social, physical and mental format to obtain some assembly of a healthy quality of life, Maureen now is fighting to locate the funds required for a prescription (Herceptin) that is going to cost her $1000 per pill x 2 per day. A total of $60,000 per month from her small Social Security Insurance and meek retirement check together. Yesterday they were covering her house hold needs with a few extra dollars for a few vacations.
Where does someone come up with tens-of-thousands for medicine to fight diseases when they can barely place food on the table or pay their mortgage each month? As an
American Cancer Society volunteer working with hundreds of cancer patients I often hear “I’ve been borrowing against my home to make ends meet, and that can’t go on forever. I’m so afraid these drugs are going to make me homeless.”
The question and debate is now arising in the medical clinics, hospital hallways, gym locker rooms, and the surgery scrub room between doctors, nurses and administrators. No where close to the ears of the patients which it effects the most. The new “specialty” drugs have become the fight, fright and fuss of the medical world. About 25% of all money in this country goes to these drugs - $73 billion this year, a figure expected to increase to $99 billion by 2010. In two years, half of all drugs approved by the F.D.A. will be specialty drugs, says Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Minnesota and director of the university’s PRIME Institute. (AARP, Oct 2008).
The largest factor in producing any drug is what the market will bear. The industry approach is simple they price the drug as high as possible and see if the world is willing to go along with it. It does not take a brain surgeon to understand that one. We see it with our economy every day…check out your gas tank!
The drug industry position is that the prices reflect the high cost of research and development. One biotech company official told the Los Angeles Times that it’s the cost of R&D “as well as the price determined by the market.” (AARP,Oct 2008)
Not only are these specialty drugs expensive they are very hard to come by. Not only by the patient but the medical field. It can be a battle and a real issue of access not only because of the insurance bottle-neck policy, but the manufacture processing schedule. Leaving the patient who can actually dream of utilizing these drugs with even a bigger battle locating them.
The medical field is now up against numerous factors surrounding these drugs; high cost, access, and managing patients who in their own right may have been cured or at least had the option of a true managed health care program providing them some resemblance of a quality of life.
I think of my own life fighting and living with cancer. I have no option of a pill, or radiation/chemo to cure my disease. So I had not the choice of a multi-billion dollar drug that just may have changed my cancer outcome. Not that I could have ever afforded such a problem. I often find myself expressing to other patients that God saved me at least the pain, suffering and timeless worrying of facing the medical world, financial crises, mental anguish and physical drain surrounding these specialty drugs.
Think about it if Rheumatoid Arthritis is part of these high-priced drugs (which they are), the prices of the new oncology drugs are shaking the entire health care system. If you are fortunate enough to be able to afford these drugs even with government aid, there most likely will come a time when your insurance is to hit its lifetime capacity. It becomes a nightmare of paperwork and red tap. These specialty drugs cause problems for those that can afford them. The problems are massive…for lower, middle and upper income patients.
This is where your diagnoses be it Cancer, MS, Arthritis or Heart disease can allow you to turn the tide on medical and health issues that plague our country. Take those raw emotions, unleashed anger, feverish frustration, mental and physical anguish that may plague you since the day you were diagnosed and change the system for you and all other patients. Your disease must become the voice of an advocacy program of tomorrow.
Believe me, working with the
American Cancer Society I found my voice, diligent work and determination can change policy, procedures and make patient choices work for us “the patient”. Do not sit and think of the What if’s or May not’s, as tomorrow is right around the corner.
We must continue to be the advocate of those that cannot use their voices, physical power or mental capabilities for their own fight. Look at you own fight, use that energy your disease is giving you through your anger, frustration, loneliness, or desperation to a group that is working for the entire patient population. Check out
ACS Cancer Action Network.
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