110 oncologists and hematologists are protesting against the cost of cancer treatments considered too expensive according to these practitioners. In a call published in Le Figaro newspaper, the one hundred and ten signatories including Dominique Maraninchi, former director of the Medicines Agency (ANSM), and Jean-Paul Vernant, professor of hematology express “the urgency of controlling the prices of new cancer drugs“.
The French are taking over from their American colleagues who were indignant last year at the exorbitant cost of therapeutic innovations, which rose from 10,000 to more than 120,000 dollars per patient and per year in about fifteen years. away the most modest American patients.
Oncologists are worried that this scenario will occur in France. “The prices of new products are exploding while the cost of their R&D (research and development, editor’s note) has fallen”, they explain in Le Figaro. And to do the math: “The burden of R&D is not enough to justify the very high prices of these new treatments. Moreover, the accounts of the pharmaceutical industry themselves confirm this low burden, where on average 15% of the branch’s turnover is allocated to R&D against more than 25% for marketing expenses, and announced profit margins exceeding 15% “.
Dominique Maraninchi and Jean-Paul Vernant affirm that the pharmaceutical industry determines its prices according to what the market is ready to pay. “These unfair considerations and which lead to considerable differences in costs according to the countries pose” threats real pressure on the equity of patient access to innovative cancer treatments, as well as on the sustainability “of the health system.
“A fair price” for drugs to be redefined
The authors suggest a few avenues for solving this problem, such as “defining a fair price for cancer drugs, based on the sums invested by manufacturers for the R&D of the product”, to which “would be added a reasonable return on investment”.
They also advocate “making the price arbitration system more democratic and transparent, by involving (…) representatives of patients and professionals”.
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