http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2008/05/06/joe-collier-an-end-in-sight-for-the-secretive-drug-price-fixing-pact-between-government-and-industry/ Just another blogs.bmj.com weblog Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:44:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2008/05/06/joe-collier-an-end-in-sight-for-the-secretive-drug-price-fixing-pact-between-government-and-industry/#comment-2559 Bearz Alessandra and Tirelli Umberto Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:15:07 +0000 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2008/05/06/joe-collier-an-end-in-sight-for-the-secretive-drug-price-fixing-pact-between-government-and-industry/#comment-2559 In the report by Professor Joe Collier the issue of drug price has been discussed, claiming a new system for calculating the costs of drugs. We totally agree with the importance of a new system for determining the policy of price between Companies and the National Health Systems. In the oncological field, many new drugs have been approved or are in the process of being approved and all of them are currently very expensive. In many cases they have a statistically significant improvement on overall survival, although the impact is of particularly low entity. For many of those drugs, the target patients are rather numerous, since their action is focused on high incidence tumors like lung, breast, or colorectal cancer. The risk is to force the National health Systems to spend huge amount of resources in the next years or to restrict the use of those drugs. Regional cost-utility analyses should be performed in order to help physicians in their decision of specific regimens, particularly for poor prognosis patients. Moreover, we suggest that Regulatory Agencies should approve low impact drugs with a significant lower cost in order to allow patients in every country to have access to those new drugs as well as to avoid bankruptcy. In the report by Professor Joe Collier the issue of drug price has been discussed, claiming a new system for calculating the costs of drugs. We totally agree with the importance of a new system for determining the policy of price between Companies and the National Health Systems. In the oncological field, many new drugs have been approved or are in the process of being approved and all of them are currently very expensive. In many cases they have a statistically significant improvement on overall survival, although the impact is of particularly low entity. For many of those drugs, the target patients are rather numerous, since their action is focused on high incidence tumors like lung, breast, or colorectal cancer. The risk is to force the National health Systems to spend huge amount of resources in the next years or to restrict the use of those drugs.
Regional cost-utility analyses should be performed in order to help physicians in their decision of specific regimens, particularly for poor prognosis patients.
Moreover, we suggest that Regulatory Agencies should approve low impact drugs with a significant lower cost in order to allow patients in every country to have access to those new drugs as well as to avoid bankruptcy.

]]> http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2008/05/06/joe-collier-an-end-in-sight-for-the-secretive-drug-price-fixing-pact-between-government-and-industry/#comment-2391 George Mason Fri, 09 May 2008 13:28:31 +0000 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2008/05/06/joe-collier-an-end-in-sight-for-the-secretive-drug-price-fixing-pact-between-government-and-industry/#comment-2391 I like what you suggest in last paragraph. Thank you for publicising this matter I like what you suggest in last paragraph. Thank you for publicising this matter

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