Breast Cancer Research Offers Hope, But Only For A Few
Breast Cancer Research Offers Hope, But Only For A Few
Breast Cancer Research Offers Hope, But Only For A Few
Or - Why We Need Single Payer Health Insurance
In a recent report, researchers told a medical conference in San Antonio, Texas that their research indicates that a combination of two drugs offers considerable hope to some women with breast cancer in its early stage. Those drugs are, Herceptin and Tykerb.
They said that, in some breast cancer cases, the cancer appears to occur when the women's bodies produce too much of a protein called HER - 2. When administered at an early stage of breast cancer, the combination of Herceptin and Tykerb show considerable promise in combating these cancers.
Often doctors who treat breast cancer do so with a combination of drugs followed by surgery. They treat women with drugs to reduce the size of the breast cancer tumors. That way, when they do surgery to remove the tumors, the cutting needed to remove the tumors can be less drastic. This, more limited, surgery is easier on the patient, and also can be less dis-figuring.
According to the report, slightly more than half of the women who received a combination of Herceptin and Tykerb for four months prior to surgery had no evidence of invasive cancers in the breast when the surgery was done. By contrast, only 25% to 30% of patients were tumor free at surgery when only one of these drugs was used before the surgery.
Tykerb does have side effects, including diarrhea. But, in combination, the two drugs can offer considerable hope to many women with early stage breast cancer.
However, the cost of drugs will make this help inaccessible to many women. One month's supply of Herceptin costs more than $4,000, while a month's supply of Tykerb costs $5,000 to $6,000. This means that only very rich women, or those with very generous health insurance, will be able to afford the drugs. Any plans that do cover the drugs, would probably have very high premiums. Most health insurance plans, and health care services plans, have formularies or lists of drugs that are paid for by the insurance or plan. It is highly likely that most insurers, or health care services plans, simply would not cover these expensive drugs.
Things could be different if the states, or the federal government, established single payer plans. In these plans the costs of medical care, and medications would be paid by the governments who establish the single payer plan. If California established such a plan, it would probably buy the above drugs in such large quantities that the drug companies could lower their prices for the drugs considerably and still make a decent profit. That benefit would be much greater if the federal government was the one administering the single payer plan.
And the drug companies can afford to lower their prices and still make a decent profit. According to a Fortune Magazine 2008 report, the pharmaceutical industry was the third most profitable industry with an average net profit of 15.8%. Fortune says they were in third place again in 20009 with a profit margin of 19.3%. Most industries would probably be happy if they could get a 10% profit margin.
So science continues to make remarkable progress in creating better ways to treat life threatening diseases. However, much of the benefit of those advances will probably remain unavailable to most people unless our state or nation adopts a single payer plan.
Boyce Hinman
California Communities United Institute
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