by Ralph W. Moss, PhD. | Jan 25, 2019
The public is fed up with the cancer drug ripoff of runaway prices. Just when you need financial and emotional support you are hit with crazy expenses. Big Pharma has set cancer drug prices way beyond what most people can possibly afford. This has got to stop!
When the $40 billion Big Pharma company Merck launched its immune system drug Keytruda in 2014, it priced it at $150,000 per year. Keytruda thus became one of the most expensive drugs in medical history. But bear in mind that average American workers make $857 per week or $44,564 per year. So how on earth can people come up with more than three years worth of salary for just this one drug?
Then, to add insult to injury, in 2017, the FDA approved another type of immune drug, called Kymriah. Seeing what others were getting away with, Novartis demanded a mind boggling $475,000 for each infusion. This drug treats a kind of leukemia that mainly affects children and teens. So it was truly a case of “your money or your kid’s life.”
Then another company released a competing drug, Yescarta, they priced it at a “mere” $373,000 for adult lymphoma, Novartis then reduced the price of Kymriah for lymphoma to match the price of Yescarta. Apparently it could afford to “lose” $102,000 and still make a huge profit. But it kept the $475,000 price tag for kids with acute leukemia.
And, mind you, YOU, the consumer, paid for most of the research on these new drugs through the part of your tax payments that went for medical research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) states at its website:
“The NIH invests nearly $37.3 billion annually in medical research for the American people.”
Thus, the “the American people” pay twice–once to help develop these drugs, and again to pay their outrageous costs.
CANCER STORY 