Can Quality-Adjusted Life Year Avoidance Help in Oncology Drug Reimbursement Decisions?

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Oncologists who advise payment authorities in Canada or elsewhere have good reasons to worry about which new therapies to fund. The last 6 or so years have seen the arrival of numerous drugs costing tens of thousands of US dollars per patient annually. Most of these drugs exploit biotechnology methods to target biological processes with exceptional
specificity, often leading to therapeutics that for practical purposes, are nearly unique in their clinical effects. Clinical and financial success begets ever faster development, so we can expect many more such drugs. Moreover, combination therapy may become almost as common in oncology as in HIV therapy, raising the possibility of treating patients with more than one $20,000 per year drug.

John E. Calfee is a resident scholar at AEI.

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About the Author

 

John E.
Calfee
  • Economist John E. Calfee (1941-2011) studied the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), along with the economics of tobacco, tort liability, and patents. He previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Economics. He had also taught marketing and consumer behavior at the business schools of the University of Maryland at College Park and Boston University. While Mr. Calfee's writings are mostly on pharmaceutical markets and FDA regulation, his academic articles and opinion pieces covered a variety of topics, from patent law and tort liability to advertising and consumer information. His books include Prices, Markets, and the Pharmaceutical Revolution (AEI Press, 2000) and Biotechnology and the Patent System (AEI Press, 2007). Mr. Calfee wrote regularly for AEI's Health Policy Outlook series. He testified before Congress and federal agencies on various topics, including alcohol advertising; biodefense vaccine research; international drug prices; and FDA oversight of drug safety.

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