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    Why health insurance costs so much these days

    I know I'm beating a dead horse
    But the reason why health insurance costs jump so much every year these days is because every year a new more expensive cancer drug comes out
    We now have $475,000 per year gene therapy

    No illegal aliens on Medicaid will be getting this treatment I can assure you that

    I'm sure next year a $900k per year drug will be approved and then paid for by the us govt (who spends the most on cancer care by far)

    I say it again and again, they did not have $100k medical treatments when Reagan was in office.
    Most you could hope for is a shot of penicillin and hopefully ride out the wave.
    But these days we have half million dollar options and many people are exercising those options.


    F.D.A. Approves First Gene-Altering Leukemia Treatment, Costing $475,000


    A technician working with human cells belonging to cancer patients at Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Morris Plains, N.J. The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved Novartis’s gene therapy for leukemia, the first-ever treatment that alters a patient’s own cells to fight cancer.

    By DENISE GRADY
    August 30, 2017

    The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved the first-ever treatment that genetically alters a patient’s own cells to fight cancer, a milestone that is expected to transform treatment in the coming years.

    The new therapy turns a patient’s cells into a “living drug,” and trains them to recognize and attack the disease. It is part of the rapidly growing field of immunotherapy that bolsters the immune system through drugs and other therapies and has, in some cases, led to long remissions and possibly even cures.

    The therapy, marketed as Kymriah and made by Novartis, was approved for children and young adults for an aggressive type of leukemia — B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia — that has resisted standard treatment or relapsed. The F.D.A. called the disease “devastating and deadly” and said the new treatment fills an “unmet need.”

    Novartis and other companies have been racing to develop gene therapies for other types of cancers, and experts expect more approvals in the near future. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the F.D.A. commissioner, said that more than 550 types of experimental gene therapy were being studied.


    There are drawbacks to the approach. Because Kymriah can have life-threatening side effects, including dangerous drops in blood pressure, the F.D.A. is requiring that hospitals and doctors be specially trained and certified to administer it, and that they stock a certain drug needed to quell severe reactions.

    Kymriah, which will be given to patients just once and must be made individually for each, will cost $475,000. Novartis said that if a patient does not respond within the first month after treatment, there will be no charge. The company also said it would provide financial help to families who were uninsured or underinsured.


    Emily Whitehead, shown here in May, was near death at age 6 from leukemia and became the first pediatric patient to receive the experimental gene therapy. She is now 12 and has been in remission for more than five years.
    CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Discussing the high price during a telephone news conference, a Novartis official noted that bone-marrow transplants, which can cure some cases of leukemia, cost even more, from $540,000 to $800,000.

    About 600 children and young adults a year in the United States would be candidates for the new treatment.

    The approval was based largely on a trial in 63 severely ill children and young adults who had a remission rate of 83 percent within three months — a high rate, given that relapsed or treatment-resistant disease is often quickly fatal.

    The treatment was originally developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and licensed to Novartis. It was identified in previous reports as CAR-T cell therapy, CTL019 or tisagenlecleucel.

    The first child to receive the therapy was Emily Whitehead, who was 6 and near death from leukemia in 2012 when she was treated, at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Now 12, she has been free of leukemia for more than five years.

    To customize Kymriah for individual patients, white blood cells called T cells will be removed from a patient’s bloodstream at an approved medical center, frozen, shipped to Novartis in Morris Plains, N.J., for genetic engineering and multiplying, frozen again and shipped back to the medical center to be dripped into the patient. That processing is expected to take 22 days.

    Novartis said the treatment would be available at an initial network of 20 approved medical centers to be certified within a month, a number that would be expanded to 32 by the end of the year. Five centers will be ready to start extracting T cells from patients within three to five days, the company said.

    An intravenous bag of Kymriah, which must be customized for individual patients. It is expected to cost $475,000 and can have potentially fatal side effects.
    NOVARTIS, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Certification is being required because the revved-up T cells can touch off an intense reaction, sometimes called a cytokine storm, that can cause high fever, low blood pressure, lung congestion, neurological problems and other life-threatening complications. Medical staff members need training to manage these reactions, and hospitals are being told that before giving Kymriah to patients, they must be sure that they have the drug needed to treat the problems, tocilizumab, also called Actemra.

    Dr. Kevin J. Curran, a pediatric oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, said his hospital was “99 percent” of the way through the certification process, and would soon be offering Kymriah.

    “This is a big paradigm shift, using this living drug,” Dr. Curran said. “It will provide a lot of hope. This is the beginning.”


    He said he expected that eventually this type of treatment would work for other, more common types of cancer, not just for leukemia.

    The F.D.A.’s approval of Kymriah ushers in “a new approach to the treatment of cancer and other serious and life-threatening diseases,” the agency said in a statement, noting that the new therapy is “the first gene therapy available in the United States.”

    Dr. Carl June, a leader in developing the treatment at the University of Pennsylvania, recalled that in 2010, when tests showed that the first patient was leukemia-free a month after being treated, he and his colleagues did not believe it. They ordered another biopsy to be sure.

    “Now, I have to keep pinching myself to see that this happened,” Dr. June said, his voice breaking with emotion. “It was so improbable that this would ever be a commercially approved therapy, and now it’s the first gene therapy approved in the United States. It’s so different from all the pharmaceutical models. I think the cancer world is forever changed.”

    #2
    Man, that was a lot to read [emoji1], but glad I did. That's awesome!

    Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk

    Comment


      #3
      And how much did a new truck that cost 60k today cost when Reagan was in office?

      You will never win because the real reason health insurance goes up so much is because those who pay are paying for those who don't pay. And the government added way too much red tape. Or are you saying ALL the doctors who complain about having to hire people just to take care of the new paperwork are lying?

      Comment


        #4
        And by your logic shop lifters do not cause the price of good to go up. I mean how many people shoplift - less than 1%..so....

        Comment


          #5
          The quality of our health care is exceeding our ability to pay for it. If you remove all the "new" things since Reagan, heatlh care probably cost about the same. If you want 1980 treatments, you can save a lot of money, just don't expect to live as long.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by texansfan View Post
            I know I'm beating a dead horse
            But the reason why health insurance costs jump so much every year these days is because every year a new more expensive cancer drug comes out
            Why don't we just end research and development until health insurance costs come down?

            Comment


              #7
              Moving on

              Comment


                #8
                Gonna skip the debate bait offered by OP, but that treatment is truly revolutionary. Also, glad that researchers are pursuing over 500 variants of cancer to attack this way.

                Disclaimer: my mother died from cancer. So, I guess my perspective is skewed to want to find treatments to save others -- especially kids.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by batmaninja View Post
                  Why don't we just end research and development until health insurance costs come down?
                  LoL
                  Because I want them to find a cure for Prostate cancer before I or anyone I know gets it.
                  The sooner the better
                  Last edited by texansfan; 09-12-2017, 10:24 AM.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by RiverRat1 View Post
                    And how much did a new truck that cost 60k today cost when Reagan was in office?

                    You will never win because the real reason health insurance goes up so much is because those who pay are paying for those who don't pay. And the government added way too much red tape. Or are you saying ALL the doctors who complain about having to hire people just to take care of the new paperwork are lying?
                    Listen.
                    Those who don't pay don't get $500k per year treatments
                    Why don't you understand that

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by texansfan View Post
                      LoL

                      Because I want them to find a cure for Prostate cancer before I or anyone I know gets it.

                      The sooner the better


                      Don't be a complete dumbass!

                      My dad died of cancer in 2012. When he was in md Anderson there were 1000's going thru the same thing. I don't have confidence in them curing cancer but it is job security for a lot of people. It's bs!!!

                      Comment


                        #12
                        I'll take the bait for a second only....listen, the profit is not in a cure it is in treatments and drugs so no matter how much they research they will not offer a cure for us..bye now.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          52% of the people in my state are on medicade. I'm sure that has zero to do with why health insurance is so expensive.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by ladrones View Post
                            52% of the people in my state are on medicade. I'm sure that has zero to do with why health insurance is so expensive.
                            Don't bother...toll's mind is made up & it has nothing to do with dependents the rest of us support & only the evil free market / capital enterprise system is to blame.

                            Certainly, the most very recent & huge increases from obamacare have no effect in his eyes. That (and our tax dollars) is his cash cow.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by skipetex View Post
                              I'll take the bait for a second only....listen, the profit is not in a cure it is in treatments and drugs so no matter how much they research they will not offer a cure for us..bye now.
                              Actually, according to the article posted, the gene therapy treatment is a one-time administration that either cures the patient or not. (Process takes 22 days to customize the patient's T-cells.) If it doesn't work, you get your $475,000 back. If it works -- which was 83 percent of the time -- you get to live.

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