Doctors are excited about the prospect of Avastin, a drug already widely used for colon cancer, as a crucial new treatment for breast and lung cancer, too. But doctors are cringing at the price the maker, Genentech, plans to charge for it: about $100,000 a year.
That wasn't a typo. One Hundred Thousand Dollars a year. An amount of money less than 20% of all households in The United States earns. Enough to buy you a different Toyota Tacoma Prerunner to drive for every day of the week. Enough for me to take about a year long vacation. Too fucking much for a drug that means the difference between life and death.
I can hear the sorry corporate apologists chiming in now with their all too predictable defense of the very corporate entities that screw them regularly. It takes soooo much time and money to develop a breakthrough medicine they'll say, and the prices need to be so high to cover these costs. You hear them repeat that like a parrot every time someone has the bad manners to bring up the fact they are being ripped off by Big Pharma, and I'm sure there are plenty of people out there saying that about Avastin. Except in this case Genetech and it's majority owner, Roche, don't agree with them. back to the Times:
Until now, drug makers have typically defended high prices by noting the cost of developing new medicines. But executives at Genentech and its majority owner, Roche, are now using a separate argument — citing the inherent value of life-sustaining therapies.
If society wants the benefits, they say, it must be ready to spend more for treatments like Avastin and another of the company's cancer drugs, Herceptin, which sells for $40,000 a year.
"As we look at Avastin and Herceptin pricing, right now the health economics hold up, and therefore I don't see any reason to be touching them," said William M. Burns, the chief executive of Roche's pharmaceutical division and a member of Genentech's board. "The pressure on society to use strong and good products is there."
Translation? We're charging this much because we can. And if you don't like it, you can literally roll over and die.
Genentech made over $4,600,000 A DAY during the first quarter this year by the way. Up 48% from a year ago.
I'm an atheist, but you know, should I be wrong about the whole God thing, It'll be way cool to watch people like William M. Burns burn in hell.
read the whole Times article here if you'd like.
2 comments:
In the life imitating art department, I just realized the chief asshole quoted in the article here would be referred to as.....Mr. Burns. Cantcha just hear him now when the proposal for the $100k price tag was presented at the Genentech board meeting...."eeexxxxccceeeellleennntttt"..
Looks like I'll be going to Mexico to get Gerson treatment if I ever develop cancer. As the commenter above me said, "better to die, than be ripped off and die anyway."
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