“Oral Parity”: Reducing the Cost of Cancer Care

In many ways this is a golden age of progress in the fight against blood cancer. For many Americans living with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma, they have seen their cancer diagnosis transformed from a death sentence to a manageable chronic disease.

This is thanks in large part to the discovery of new, targeted drug therapies, many of which come in the form of a pill instead of being administered intravenously. Today tens of thousands of cancer patients rely on an oral therapy and, for patients living with certain cancer diagnoses, an oral drug is the only one available to treat their maladies. Many more of these cancer-fighting pills are on the way, too. It goes without saying, oral versus intravenous therapy contributes significantly to a patient’s improved quality of life.

With oral therapies having become central to the treatment of cancer, common sense would suggest health insurance should cover these therapies at a level similar to that provided for cancer therapies administered via other methods. But, shockingly, cancer patients who require oral therapy typically face much higher cost-sharing for their treatments than do patients who need IV therapy—even if the two drugs cost the same to the health plan.

Read full article here