Cancer Drug Shortages in America? Yes.
This video highlights the cancer drug shortages currently happening in the United States of America. It is unconscionable. What is the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) doing to help?
The Group Room interviews at the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) 2012 annual meeting in Las Vegas was made possible by the generous support of our members.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
NBC reporter
Imagine being the parent of a sick child with a form of cancer that is very dangerous but very treatable, at the same time, with the right medicine. Then, imagine how you’d feel being told you can’t get the medicine because of a sudden shortage.
ABC reporter
A critical drug shortage is a medicine some cancer patients rely on to stay alive, but the drug is now in such short supply patients are actually being turned away.
CBS reporter
The food and drug administration says hospitals are running out of many drugs including popular cancer fighting medications such as doxil and other chemotherapy treatments.
Senator Orrin Hatch, Finance Committee SD-215, Hearing on Drug Shortages: Why They Happen and What They Mean.
The total number of drugs and shortage currently exceeds 275 FDA approved therapies and continues to grow.
Ted Okon, Executive Director, Community Oncology Alliance
People can’t believe, in the United States of America, that there are Americans who can’t get treatment because the drugs are not available. In a lot of cases, in most cases, these are low cost injectable, generic cancer drugs, but are mainstay part of treatment.
Mary Kruczynski, Director of Policy, Community Oncology Alliance
When we walk the halls of congress the first thing someone asks us, no matter whose office we’re in is, ‘tell me about the drug shortages, what do you see the problem as, how can we fix this? We’re hearing from our constituents that they can’t get their drugs; this is a serious problem.’
Bobbi Buell, Principal, onPoint Oncology
The entire generic industry now has real serious problems now because the way Medicare pays.
Ted Okon, Executive Director, Community Oncology Alliance
My wife is a full time working oncology nurse and recently she’s come home and said, ‘you know, you spend a lot of time in Washington D.C. but you haven’t fixed this yet.’ And she’s really serious about it because she has patients who basically can’t get certain treatments or their treatments are delayed because of these drug shortages.
Scott Parker, Executive Director, Northwest Georgia Oncology
Just in the last year we’ve had trouble accessing over 20 cancer drugs that are generics that typically, those patients and the practices were able to get easily.
Bobbi Buell, Principal, onPoint Oncology
Medicare pays by a system called ‘average sales price’ and the problems with generics drugs, when they come out, the cheapest drug is always the most popular and the average sales price for the generics is always the best seller weights the average of this average sales price.
Lee Schwartzberg, MD, FACP, Medical Director, The West Clinic, Memphis, TN
It’s just not simply viable for companies to make these drugs and take on some of the overhead and the risk with very little reward.
Ted Okon, Executive Director, Community Oncology Alliance
Medicare and the government have impacted what is happening here and it is a system that is price controlled. I like to say price controls never work; they always have unintended consequences, and in this case it is affecting and impacting Americans with cancer. And it has to be changed right now.
Bobbi Buell, Principal, onPoint Oncology
Because Medicare is paying at a very low rate, because of this averaging, people all flock to the low price leader and other people can’t stay in business. Well, if this low price leader all of the sudden has a manufacturing problem, there is no more entrance in the market and therefore there is a drug shortage.
Senator Orrin Hatch, Finance Committee SD-215, Hearing on Drug Shortages: Why They Happen and What They Mean.
The current situation is simply unacceptable. We must act to address this growing crisis. As most of my colleagues know, I am working on a solution that will continue to improve coordination between manufacturers and the government, but that also address some of the federal price control and rebate structures that prevent the true costs of bringing these important medicines to patients.
Ted Okon, Executive Director, Community Oncology Alliance
We’re hoping that there will be some legislation, which will be coming out shortly, which will actually tackle the fundamental cause of the drug shortages. And if that happens and the legislation is what we think it’s going to be, then we’re going to get very much behind and we’re going to ask everybody across this country to get behind this legislation.
Lee Schwartzberg, MD, FACP, Medical Director, The West Clinic, Memphis, TN
I think this is a real tragedy, the fact that we’ve gotten to the point where drugs that save lives, drugs that have been around for years, sometimes decades, drugs that are often very cheap to produce, if they are to be produced, are no longer in supply. This is, in my mind, unconscionable in the United States of America.
END OF VIDEO