Epsilon Delta
Jedi Master
Thought it was interesting and thought I'd share:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17tue2.html?src=recg
New York Times said:The Value of Comparison
Published: May 16, 2011
Before you take a drug or undergo a medical procedure, wouldnt you want to be sure it is the most effective and, if possible, the least costly available?
That is the idea behind so-called comparative effective research that is part of the health care reform law. Unfortunately, in the effort to win Republican support (support that never materialized), the bills sponsors agreed to bar Medicare from using comparative studies to determine which treatments to pay for. Critics charged it would mean more bureaucratic interference and a step toward socialized medicine.
The shortsightedness of that thinking was made clear last month when results were released of a government-sponsored study comparing two drug treatments for macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in older Americans.
Both drugs are made by Genentech. Even so, there is a vast difference in their cost and, until now, uncertainty about their relative effectiveness.
[...]
Clinical trials sponsored by Genentech showed that Lucentis is highly effective in preserving and improving vision. The cost per monthly dose, however, was set by the company at $2,000. [...] Avastin can cost thousands of dollars a month for the quantities used to treat cancer, but the doses suitable for injection into the eye cost about $50 a month. [...] In 2008, Medicare paid for 480,000 injections of Avastin to treat macular degeneration at a cost of $20 million. And it paid for 337,000 injections of Lucentis, at a cost of $537 million.
Until now, however, there was no scientific proof about whether Avastin was as effective as Lucentis. The National Eye Institute sponsored a two-year clinical trial whose first-year results were published in late April. It suggests that the cheaper Avastin is just as effective as Lucentis at preventing vision loss. More people taking Avastin were hospitalized, an adverse effect that needs further exploration, but there were no significant differences in the rate of deaths, heart attacks and strokes.
If these findings and the drugs safety are confirmed in the second year, Medicare could save hundreds of millions of dollars annually if doctors used Avastin. But, as the system now works, Medicare cannot push doctors to switch. That means that taxpayers will likely continue to pay a lot more for a treatment that is no more effective. That makes no sense for anybody, except the drug maker.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17tue2.html?src=recg