A recent study performed by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center indicates that Medicare wastes over $3 billion every year on cancer medications that get thrown away. Due to inconvenient vial sizes and health regulations, large amounts of expensive cancer drugs wind up in the garbage. In Europe, where the government plays an active role in drug dispensing and pricing, these same medications are sold in smaller, more manageable sizes. Somehow these convenient, lower-waste sizes have not made the transition to America.
The New York Times discusses this issue further.
“Drug companies are quietly making billions forcing little old ladies to buy enough medicine to treat football players, and regulators have completely missed it,” said Dr. Peter B. Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering and a co-author of the study. “If we’re ever going to start saving money in health care, this is an obvious place to cut.”
The researchers analyzed the waste generated by the top 20 selling cancer medicines and concluded that insurers paid drug makers $1.8 billion annually on discarded quantities and then spent about $1 billion on markups to doctors and hospitals.
[…]
In one example, the study said that in the United States Takeda Pharmaceuticals sells Velcade, a drug for the treatment of multiple myeloma and lymphoma, only in 3.5-milligram vials that sell for $1,034 and hold enough medicine to treat a person who is 6 feet 6 inches tall and who weighs 250 pounds. If a patient is smaller, then a quantity of the precious powder is thrown away.
Lena Haddad, 53, of Germantown, Md., who has been living with multiple myeloma for four years, now gets a weekly dose of 1.8 milligrams of Velcade. On a recent day at Ms. Haddad’s doctor’s office in Bethesda, Md., a nurse, Patricia Traylor, took a vial of Velcade from a large drug cabinet. She injected a syringeful of saline into the vial and shook it, pushed a needle into the vial and withdrew about half the contents. Then she threw out the vial with the remaining medicine.
“You can’t use the remainder for the patient the next time she comes in or use it on another patient, so it has to be discarded as waste,” Ms. Traylor said.
Safety standards permit nurses to use drug leftovers in other patients only if used within six hours and only in specialized pharmacies.
Told that she was using only about half of the drug that was purchased, Ms. Haddad said she was shocked.
“No wonder my premiums keep going up,” she said.
Read the full New York Times article here.
Photo by Bill Brooks via Flickr CC License
