Cutting cancer Medicare costs

[Joan M]

Here's how they do it. And the next to last paragraph mentions Herceptin.

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhpr0807774

Dr. Bach, the author of the article, was mentioned in a recent NYT article about modeling Medicare cost-cutting.

Joan

[Nancy L]

Unless Obamacare is repealed which is highly unlikely, there are other Medicare cuts coming. The link you included was describing what Medicare was doing regarding Herceptin back in 2009. Who knows what is planned next but if they need to cut a lot of dollars, they are going to target the high priced procedures and drugs. I am Stage IV and on Herceptin/Tykerb. I have to go on Medicare next summer so I guess I will find out then.

Thanks for the post.

[AlaskaAngel]

I think the pressure here needs to be on studies that are designed to help to identify which patients actually benefit and which do not, so that the ones who do not are not wasting precious time and money getting it without any benefit. Half do not benefit. Pressure also needs to continue on studies that help to identify why it stops working when it does stop working for most patients who initially benefitted from it, so that if there are ways to get continued benefit from it, patients have access to them.

A.A.