Pharmacy cost in cancer.

Abstract

e18358 Background: Health care spending in US is highest in the developed world and contributes to up to 1/5 of the GDP. The price escalation is steep and contribution from cancer care is soaring. The cost of medications is deemed to be the leading cause of increased health care spending. In this era of precision medicine, with more effective and better tolerated drugs, patients are using them for longer periods of time, adding to the ever mounting health care spending. Methods: We used a large claims based data set US database MarketScan to explore the economic burden of drug cost in cancer care. Between January 1, 2013 and September 30, 2015 we identified 195,290 enrollees with active cancer. We analyzed the economic burden of medications for overall cancer care by exploring the total cost of care and the pharmacy expenditure by various classes of drugs for these patients. The perspective was that of the health care system as the costs included payments by the insurer and the patient. Results: There were 195,290 active cancer patients in this analysis. Mean age was 61 years, 55% were females. Breast cancer was the most common diagnosis. Mean total cost of care and total drug cost per patient over the study period was $141,415 and $13,579, respectively. The total pharmacy expenditure across all study patients was ~2.5B. Antineoplastic drugs make up the largest portion of the total pharmacy expenditure at 39%. Cost contribution based on drug categories were anti-infective (6%), cardiovascular (6%), central nervous system (including opiates, anti-nausea medications and antidepressants) (7%), blood formulations (including anticoagulants) (8%), hormones (8%) and gastrointestinal drugs (4%) respectively. Conclusions: Based on the real world information from a large insurance claims database, this study quantifies the contribution of various drug classes to the cost of cancer care. Antineoplastic contribute to > 1/3rd of the total pharmacy spending. With increasing trend for immunotherapy and combination therapy drug costs are bound to go up even more steeply. Unless drug prices are regulated, we are looking towards an unsustainable level of growth in the health care spending in cancer care.