That is what this chart asks:
Baffling to me drug companies can sell a drug that does this, and charge $80,000 for it pic.twitter.com/iZ9D6hpIbp
— V Prasad (@VinayPrasad82) July 16, 2016
An $80,000 per course of treatment that is better than the previous regime. It providers, on median, an extra twelve days of life before half of the cohort dies.
Backing out some very rough calculations, that gives a quality adjusted life year cost of at least $2.5 million dollars. It could be much more as I am assuming that each day is a great day instead of probably a severely discounted day.
Update 1: Someone who actually knows WTF they are talking about passed me the Journal of Clinical Oncology CBA on this drug. I was off by a bit.
Incremental cost per life year saved
† 410,000
Incremental cost per qualityadjusted
life year
† (low impact
of diarrhea to high impact of
diarrhea)
430,000-510,000
For 2007 US Dollars.
In Great Britain, a drug that has an incremental improvement over regimes like this might be worth a couple thousand dollars. If the drug prolongs life but keeps a person in the ICU for the incremental days, its incremental value would be close to zero. If the twelve extra days on average are spent out of the hospital and in great shape, it might be worth $4,000.
In the United States, we are paying 625 100 times the British willingness to pay for a quality adjusted life year in this case.
Is that how we want to use our resources? If so, than be ready to see health care costs continue to accelerate. If not, then we need to change our intellectual property regime as well as incorporate and accept some systems of no in order to get the price for a drug like this down to reasonable levels.