Cancer: More spending; more cases coming. No protection, no rules.

Global spending on cancer drugs reaches $100 billion

By Steven Ross Johnson  | May 5, 2015  Article in Modern Healthcare.com

This article showed me a lot about my lack of statistical savvy.  Still, I have to wade in and draw attention to a few things.

According to this article,  global spending on cancer rose 10.3% just last year.  "The U.S. accounted for 42% of all drug spending in 2014. "

Also, the article says  much increased yearly spending according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics (this was a new one for me) has been on targeted therapy.  Unlike the old days when doctors used the phrases like "we're going to drive a truck over you..." targeted therapy deals with the cancer cells and their interior workings, with much less old style chemo, so less whole-body damage and misery..

There have been quite a few new drugs, and something is working according to the statement:

" An estimated two-thirds of cancer patients are living at least five years after they're diagnosed, compared with 50% in 1990."  In my book, two-thirds is still not enough survival. 

And I'm not happy to learn this:"Consolidation of independent oncology practices into hospital systems, meanwhile, means patients are paying higher out-of-pocket costs. "

Then a new phrase I don't like creeps in when  Murray Aitken, executive director of the IMS Institute, is further quoted:

        “The increased prevalence of most cancers..."  

He does give us some hope later in the paragraph, but I'm still not happy to learn of that increase.  

And while I'm reeling from that, the article concludes with:

"A report released in March by the American Society of Clinical Oncology projected the number of cancer cases in the U.S. would increase 45% by 2030."  For a terrible moment I missed the important part:  "in the U.S."   

How many of those "cases in the U.S." will be among additionally insured people, and increasing numbers of older people (you know, like me.)  And: 

 :

 How many of the increased cases IN THE U.S. will prove 

        that we're causing new cancers faster

 than we can pay or learn to cure them?

I think about the things we create, breathe, eat and use that people in the EU, for instance, simply do not allow in their world.  We need to draw some boundaries.  Now.

I wish you health.

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