The American Society of Clinical Oncology issued a position statement on pricing of cancer drugs.
The statement asserts that any solutions must preserve patients’ access to care and foster innovation, analyzes a wide array of options and recommends that a panel of stakeholders be established to determine which proposals will be effective and develop a uniform approach for assessing the value of drugs.
Developed by ASCO volunteer leaders and adopted by the society’s board of directors, the ASCO Position Statement On Addressing the Affordability of Cancer Drugs analyzes a range of cost-cutting proposals, from allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, to legalizing the importation of drugs, to adopting bundled payment programs.
Specifically, ASCO proposes that a diverse group of stakeholders from across the healthcare sector:
Identify, prioritize, and test potential solutions to address the affordability of cancer drugs
Help define a standard approach to assessing the value of drugs that could be applied broadly to inform drug pricing and reimbursement.
While new classes of drugs have achieved unprecedented success in a growing number of cancers, in some cases the price of a new drug bears no relation to its effectiveness. According to one study, only 19 percent of cancer drugs recently approved by the FDA produced clinically meaningful outcomes for patients, despite their high prices.
ASCO suggests that:
The FDA consider using meaningful clinical outcomes when assessing new and supplemental drug applications, rather than small benefits that achieve statistical significance in large trials. In 2014, ASCO published a policy statement recommending a definition of clinically meaningful outcomes for cancer clinical trials, which the FDA could use when approving new cancer treatments and drug indications.
Medicare test the feasibility of a “value-based pathway” approach designed to incentivize providers to use higher-value drugs and the pharmaceutical industry to develop high-value treatments.
The full text of ASCO’s position statement is posted here.
