Cancer Drugs Cost More Than Ever. They Often Don’t Extend Lives

The moment she heard that her mother, then 67, had advanced breast cancer, Stacie Dusetzina began hunting for potential treatments. A cancer policy researcher at Vanderbilt University, Dusetzina knew the go-to drug in many cases was Pfizer Inc.’s Ibrance. She learned it might cost her mother, who lived on a fixed income, around $10,000 out of pocket annually.

Medicare, required by law to cover cancer treatment, would have paid much of the rest of the cost. At the time, in 2020, the pill listed for a jaw-dropping $160,000 a year, rising more recently to $214,000.

Despite having a PhD in pharmaceutical science, Dusetzina couldn’t figure out whether swallowing those costs — potentially for years — would help her mom live any longer or any better. Her research showed that while the drug might shrink tumors, no clinical trials proved it would extend her mother’s life. At the time of her search, Ibrance had already been on the market for five years. “I could not find any satisfactory data where I could say this is worth the money,” said Dusetzina, whose mother ended up not using the drug because she had a less common type of cancer. “It was really frustrating.”