A study of international cancer care costs has revealed that the value of US cancer drug spending has not kept pace with that of other nations in terms of health gains per dollar spent.
Sebastian Salas-Vega, MSc, and his coauthor, Elias Mossialos, both from the London School of Economics and Political Science (London, England), used data from IMS Health to look at how cancer drug pricing and treatment utilization have changed over a 10-year period from 2004-2014 in nine countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The study was published in Health Affairs.
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The number of available drugs increased in all nine countries, with Germany and the United States experiencing the highest growth and Australia the lowest growth. All countries also saw considerable improvement in outcomes associated with cancer drugs.
Spending rose sharply over the 10-year study period with prices for brand-name drugs increasing at annual rates of 1% to 13% (8% in the United States) despite a decline in their incidence-adjusted consumption. Meanwhile, the annual rate of spending on generic drugs increased by between 1% and 15% (4% in the United States).
The United States consistently outspent its peer nations on both brand-name and generic drugs. Yet, the United States saw the second lowest rate of improvement in cancer-related years of potential life lost.
As a result, although the US saw a net gain in economic value from cancer drug spending (with an estimated $32.6 billion in net positive return in 2014), the country nevertheless lagged behind the other countries evaluated in terms of health gains per dollar spent.
The authors wrote that the United States has an opportunity to improve the value of its oncology drug spending.
