Health insurers, President Obama, and some well-known cancer doctors are warning against it. They want to see price controls put on the drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies are seeing incredible profit from drugs that can mean life or death for cancer patients. One company, AbbVie, is soon expected to be able to generate $7 billion annually from its leukemia drug called Imbruvica. Another company, Bristol-Meyers, may even do better than that for a newly approved drug, Opdivo, which is for melanoma, or skin cancer. It saw a seven percent gain last week.
It is not too unusual for some insurers to be willing to pay up to two or three times a family's income in cancer cases.
Comment: There is no doubt that it cost big bucks for R&D while perfecting a new drug. However, when a company gets $7 billion in a single year, you can be sure that it is interested more in profit than is in helping people be helped or cured from their cancer.
The big-pharma companies are obviously taking advantage of health insurance companies, which is sure to eventually raise the price of coverage for everyone else. This means that it soon becomes even more unaffordable for an even larger group.
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Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-09/investors-warm-to-100-000-cancer-drugs-after-21-billion-deal
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Graphics: Mine
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Keywords: cancer drugs, cancer, drug, cancer, pharmaceutical companies, big-pharma, insurance, investors, doctors