What if the industry develops highly effective cancer treatments and no one pays for them? BusinessWeek takes on the question in a reasonably savvy brief article this week. A sample:

“At some point—and that point will come sooner rather than later—payers are not going to approve spending $100,000 for someone to live an extra six months,” says Erik Gordon, director of biomedicine at Stevens Institute of Technology. David Balekdjian, a partner at strategy consulting firm the Bruckner Group, confirms that “for many diseases, U.S. insurers are rigorously examining the outcomes new drugs produce, relative to their cost.” As insurers increasingly scrutinize cancer drugs, “many will never reach their markets,” Balekdjian warns.

And in case you missed it, here’s a link to a piece we published last year featuring a prescient conversation on the same topic between pharma cancer heavyweights Bruce Seeley (of Genentech), Robert LaCaze (Bristol-Myers Squibb), and Allison Ayers (Pfizer).

Photo by Lawrence Whittemore

Tags: BusinessWeek, Cancer, Drug Prices

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