A group of cancer researchers discovered that the federal Medicare program and private health insurers have been wasting almost $3 billion every year in purchasing expensive cancer drugs. This was blamed to the clever packaging of drug makers.
The Washington Post reported that the study, published in the British Medical Journal, has found that such amount of leftover cancer drugs are thrown away each year for safety reasons. This is because many pharmaceutical companies distribute the drugs only in single-use packages containing too much for most patients' prescribe medication.
The study, which was conducted by the researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, focused on 20 top-selling cancer medicines that are usually injected or administered intravenously by nurses working in doctors' offices or hospitals. The researchers' analysis said that these drugs come in one-size-fits-all vials with doses that are often too large for a single patient.
According to the researchers, the remainders of these single-use packages are tossed out for safety purposes. They estimated that insurers and patients paid drug makers $1.8 billion a year on discarded quantities and $1 billion on price markups to doctors and hospitals.
"Drug companies are quietly making billions forcing little old ladies to buy enough medicine to treat football players, and regulators have completely missed it," Dr. Peter B. Bach, co-author of the study, told The New York Times. "If we're ever going to start saving money in health care, this is an obvious place to cut."
"You have these incredibly expensive drugs, and you can only buy them in bulk," said Dr. Leonard Saltz, co-author of the study. "What's really interesting is they're selling these drugs in smaller vials in Europe, where regulators are clearly paying attention to this issue."
Commenting on the recent study, Christopher Kelly, spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration, said that the agency would only object to drug makers' vial sizes if it could lead to medication errors or safety issues due to inappropriate multiple dosing. "Companies propose the vial sizes that they would like to market," he stated.
