Did You Know?? Major Changes Are Coming To Medicare For All Cancer Patients!

5/12/2016

Most people are unaware of what is happening with the payment system for Medicare Part B, or the new ICER report which may limit your cancer treatment options, but they are just on the horizon. These changes have been initiated to confront the out of control price increases for existing cancer drugs and the outrageous prices for the newly developed drugs. World renowned hematologist oncologist Dr. Vincent Rajkumar of Mayo Clinic will be featured on Cure Talks to help to explain these proposed changes, along with his ideas on how to help control the high cost of cancer care. This is a can not miss opportunity to find out about these proposed changes. This broadcast will be on May 19th, at 6:00PM EST, and you can learn more about it and sign up to listen if you CLICK HERE.

3 Comments

Mark

5/18/2016 03:58:01 am

I think Dr. Rajkumar would want me on the panel - I think I am one of the few patients that sees the ICER report as more positive than negative. I look at it as a step in the right direction as it puts a spotlight on what is a big problem for many patients - the cost of the co-pays for the drugs. The other thing that could happen is that patients may be more likely to go into clinical trials if the newer drugs were more difficult to get paid through insurance. One of the criticisms people have of the ICER report is that the clinical trials used are not realistic with respect to patients in the US. That is really a problem of doctors not running good trials and patients not joining them. Better data would help patients make better therapy decisions. I do not blame ICER for not having good clinical trial data to do their analysis.

Sounds like this will be a great show.

Gary Petersen link

5/18/2016 07:40:49 am

Mark, please do listen to the program and put in your questions you would like Dr. Rajkumar to address. Just sign in at the CLICK HERE link in the post above. Look forward to hearing your thoughts. Best Regards/Gary

Mark

5/20/2016 04:39:24 am

Great discussion. After listening I am actually more positive about the ICER report and the proposed changes to Medicare. Until the politicians start allowing Medicare to negotiate prices I think these changes could be helpful for patients.

There was some discussion about why myeloma was chosen. I think it is because we are an expensive disease to treat and the outcomes are not nearly as good as other blood cancers. You know what these 3 drug combos cost for myeloma and they are not as effective for myeloma as TKI's (Gleevec) are for CML and they are not as effective as R-CHOP is for certain lymphomas. TKI's show 80% plus patients in MRD negative CR's 10 years out and R-CHOP cures 70-80% after a fixed number of cycles for certain lymphomas. We are nowhere close to those types of outcomes in myeloma and spend more treating it. Much easier to issue a report about the cost of drugs when they are that expensive and not nearly as effective as treatments are for other blood cancers. We are not even close to making the disease chronic for 80% of patients, never mind curing 70-80% of them like they do with therapies like R-CHOP for certain lymphomas.

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Did You Know?? Major Changes Are Coming To Medicare For All Cancer Patients!

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