Cancer drug prices rise in US despite increasingly competitive market – report – Endpoints News

As Democrats’ hopes for Medicare drug price negotiations seem more out of reach, a new study shows that increased competition in the cancer drug market hasn’t actually led to lower prices — well, at least not in the United States.

Between 2009 and 2020, prices increased – with one exception – within and across all 12 cancer drug classes studied in the United States, while in Switzerland and Germany prices generally decreased over time or have not increased more than inflation, according to a recent post in the Lancet.

“Regardless [of] whether or not a competitor entered the market, prices rose in the United States,” said Kerstin Vokinger, lead author and assistant professor at the University of Zurich. Terminal news. “And on the other hand, we can see another development in Europe where we have regulated prices, which indicates that negotiation and regulation helps to have affordable prices and improve access for patients.

The prices of cancer drugs in the United States rose an average of 6% two years after entering the market and 15% four years after entering the market, researchers have reported. Meanwhile, in Europe, prices fell 21% in Germany and 1.5% in Switzerland two years after market entry, and 26% in Germany and 13% in Switzerland four years after market entry. market entry.

The U.S. cancer market has seen a steady increase in monthly prices within and across all classes – ranging from immunotherapies to PARP inhibitors to PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors – except for one outlier, the VEGF/VEGFR inhibitor aflibercept from Sanofi and Regeneron for the treatment of colorectal cancer. Most price changes in the United States – 53% of them – have occurred at the end or the beginning of the calendar year, with the second most common time for price changes being in June, according to the Harvard medical professor and co-author Aaron Kesselheim.

What is behind these sharp price increases? Negotiations, to begin, write the authors.

While U.S. manufacturers are free to set prices as they see fit, Germany’s Federal Joint Committee decides a drug’s additional benefit over standard of care, which serves as the basis for price negotiations beginning one year after the marketing of the drug. And in Switzerland, the Federal Office of Public Health negotiates drug prices with manufacturers on the basis of external reference prices and therapeutic comparisons, which are reassessed approximately every three years.

John Corny

“Our results suggest that effective negotiation, as practiced in Germany or Switzerland, could be a model for policymakers in the United States to help combat the high price of cancer drugs in the United States, both at launch and post-launch,” the authors wrote.

However, US lawmakers remain divided on the issue, as was made clear during the Senate Finance Committee hearing last week. As Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) sought to reinvigorate Medicare negotiations during a hearing last Wednesday, Republicans on the committee expressed strong opposition.

“One person’s negotiation is another person’s price control,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said during the hearing.

Wyden countered that a “Medicare negotiation is just that – a process, not price control – a market-based approach to arriving at a price between buyer, Medicare and producer.”