Global cancer spending is increasing dramatically. By 2020, they will increase by 7.5 to 10.5% per year, to reach 132 billion euros, according to a study by IMS Health.
Cancer is expensive, and the trend does not seem to be going to reverse. In 2015, global expenditure amounted to 94 billion euros, including secondary treatments, thus showing an increase of 11.5% compared to 2014. And by 2020, it is expected to climb to 132 billion euros. euros, according to a study carried out by IMS Health, a company specializing in the analysis of drug markets.
The American analyst thus predicts that each year, expenses should increase between 7.5 and 10.5%. The fault of the new treatments, he believes. In five years, 70 drugs have emerged to treat 20 tumors, and almost 600 are in their final stages of development.
Because it is the advances in research and innovations in treatment that pharmaceutical companies are paying dearly. Immunotherapies, in particular, are singled out, and may weigh in the balance in the years to come.
Health systems at risk
“Most healthcare systems are having difficulty adapting and keeping up with this evolution,” explains Murray Aitken, vice president of IMS Health. It is a challenge that requires urgent attention, given the imminent arrival on the market of new therapies. “
In France, some specialists believe that the explosion of these costs could endanger the system of reimbursement of health expenses. “Today, equal access to medicines is guaranteed because we have an advantage in relation to innovation,” said Catherine Simonin, national administrator of the League against cancer. “
“But that will not last, because the health insurance will soon no longer be able to support it,” she continues. There will then be, directly or indirectly, a choice of patients who will benefit from expensive treatments. “
At the beginning of April, the League had put an online petition on change.org, in order to mobilize public opinion and put pressure on François Hollande to put the subject on the table of the G7 discussions on May 26 and 27, thus supporting the appeal of 110 French oncologists.
The President of the Republic, following the summit, furtively affirmed that the subject had been raised, without confirming concrete progress.
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