The Shocking Average Cost of New Cancer Drugs

Executive Summary

• New cancer drugs are amazing in both the consistency of their average cost and how high that cost is.

Introduction

If one looks at the normal drug market, one sees corruption in that the pharma companies create financial incentives for MDs to prescribe on-patent drugs for which there are better generic alternatives. However, for most drugs, MDs are not allowed to markup drugs. Yet this rule does not apply to chemotherapy drugs.

The Average Cost of New Cancer Drugs

Most agents launched between 2009 and 2014 cost more than $100,000 USD per year. More recently developed agents, such as CAR T-cell therapy, may cost up to almost $500,000 USD per year. The monthly cost of many anticancer drugs greatly exceeds most household incomes, including in the United States.

And as the quotes become closer to 2023, the costs only rise, as can be found in this quote from an article in Reuters.

The findings follow a recent analysis from U.S. Democratic Representative Katie Porter which found that the annual price of a newly-launched cancer drug in the United States averaged $283,000 in 2021, a 53% increase from 2017.

And this is considered entirely normal.

Chemotherapy Drugs Offer Massive Costs for Little Life Extension

Secondly, most of these drugs only add a few months to cancer patients’ lives, as explained in the quotation from Up, Up and Not Going Away: Cancer Drug Prices.

According to Hertler, 71 consecutive FDA approvals