America is winning the war on cancer. We’re making real progress in hard-to-treat cancers like metastatic melanoma, some types of lung cancer, and drug resistant leukemias and lymphomas. Even more impressive medicines (like genetically modified, tumor-killing T-cells) and diagnostics (like blood tests for tracking cancer) are expected to come online in the next several years.
But financing challenges are increasing rapidly as well. The list price of newly approved cancer treatments has doubled over the last decade, from $5,000 to $10,000 per month. While these treatments can be highly effective, overall response rates are still relatively low: Only a fraction of patients treated with new immunotherapies respond, and many new drugs will have to be used in combination, entailing dramatically increased drug treatment costs.
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