Price of Cancer Drug Jumps >1500% - Merry Christmas Big Pharma

It just can't be that hard to write a law making it illegal to significantly raise prices of drugs without substantial improvement in those drugs. It might be easier if lawmakers weren't in the pockets of Big Pharma.

Price gouging? Cancer drug price spikes from $50 to $768 per pill after change of owner

© Global Look Press

A long-standing medication for cancer has become almost unaffordable for most of patients, as its price has skyrocketed 1,500 percent over four years. The company behind the drug is under fire.

The remedy for brain tumors and Hodgkin lymphoma was introduced 42 years ago, and the highest dose was sold for $50 per capsule. The drug, called lomustine had no generic alternative and was branded as CeeNU.

In 2013, the brand’s owner Bristol Myers Squibb sold lomustine to a Miami startup called NextSource. The new owner rebranded the drug, giving it a new name – Gleostine, and multiplied the price by almost sixteen times. Now, the same treatment costs $768 for a single capsule.

According to an analysis done for the Wall Street Journal by Truveen Health Analytics and Elsevier, the company raised the price for Gleostine by 12 percent in November following a 20 percent increase in August.

Dosage is assigned by a patient’s weight with some of them needing more than one pill. That makes the medication’s price point entirely out of reach.

Any government that would allow these obscene price hikes to stand has no interest in the welfare of the lower or middle classes regardless of what they say. This can be dealt with and must be dealt with. It is obvious that free-enterprise doesn't work where one's life and health is on one side and greedy, soulless, selfish jerks are on the other.

NextSource sets prices based on the costs it bears to develop the medication and to pay regulatory agency fees, as well as on the benefits it provides patients, according to the company’s CEO Robert DiCrisci, as quoted by the media. The firm reportedly provides discounts and financial assistance to those who can't afford its cost.

Though the medicine has been in use since 1976, oncologists along with pharmacies have a renewed interest in it, as government-funded research revealed that Gleostine combined with chemotherapy can help patients struggling with brain tumors to live longer.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly started a campaign to provide a more competitive field for the medicines that have no current generics. Approving generic drugs is a top priority for the FDA. Earlier this week, the agency’s commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the FDA had approved a record number of generic drugs.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo Dies in Custody in China

Despite amazing progress toward a free-enterprise society,

China still governs itself from Communist paranoia

Jailed in 2009 for 'inciting subversion of state power,' he was being treated for liver cancer

Thomson Reuters

A protester displays portraits of jailed Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo during a demonstration outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong on Wednesday. (Vincent Yu/Associated Press)

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo has died after suffering multiple organ failure, says the government of the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, where he was being treated for late-stage liver cancer.

The Shenyang legal bureau said in a brief statement Thursday on its website that efforts to save the 61-year-old had failed.

In 2009, Liu was sentenced to 11 years behind bars for "inciting subversion of state power" after he helped write a petition known as Charter 08 while calling for sweeping political reforms.

The following year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norway-based committee for his work in China in advancing human rights. He was represented at the ceremony by an empty chair. The move greatly angered the Chinese government, which did not normalize relations with Oslo until earlier this year. 

Liu was recently moved from jail to a hospital in Shenyang. His supporters and foreign governments had urged Beijing to allow him to receive treatment abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible for a disease that had spread throughout his body.

Beijing did allow two foreign doctors, from the U.S. and Germany, to visit Liu on Saturday.

The head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee lauded Liu's accomplishments while blaming China for his "premature death." 

Liu "will remain a powerful symbol for all who fight for freedom, democracy and a better world," Berit Reiss-Andersen said in a statement.

"The Chinese government bears a heavy responsibility for his premature death."

An empty chair represents Liu at the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo in December 2010. Liu was jailed in 2009 for writing his call for political reform in China. (Toby Melville/Reuters)