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Have Cancer Treatment Costs Grown Beyond 'Sustainability?'

Many factors drive the increasing cost of cancer care.  Sophisticated, targeted drugs are expensive to develop, test and market.  Desperate patients demand them.  Other therapies - proton beam accelerators, e.g., though engineering marvels, are capital and labor intensive.  To the mix, add a healthcare system that very rarely measures costs against benefits and says 'No. We're not doing that.'

Chicago Tribune:  "Cancer cost "becoming unsustainable" in rich nations."
"...a radical shift in thinking is needed to ensure fairer access to medicines and address tricky questions like balancing extra months of life for patients against costs of a new drug, technology or care plan, (oncology experts) said."

"The cancer community needs to take responsibility and not accept a sub-standard evidence base and an ethos of very small benefit at whatever cost," said a report commissioned by the Lancet Oncology medical journal on the costs of cancer care."
[Read more from the Chicago Tribune...]

[Read TheLancet.com's Executive Summary...]

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