Pricing Cancer Drugs: When Does Pricing Become Profiteering?

The 100-plus authors of “The Price of Drugs for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) is a Reflection of the Unsustainable Prices of Cancer Drugs: From the Perspective of a Large Group of CML Experts” [1] include a telling example of cancer drug pricing: imatinib (trade name Gleevec), a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) used to treat CML, was “initially priced at nearly $30,000 per year when it was released in 2001... Its price [was] $92,000 in 2012, despite the fact that (1) all research costs were accounted for in the original proposed price”—and therefore increases were not needed to recoup costs—“(2) new indications were developed and FDA approved”—meaning that many more potential consumers now exist than when the drug was first approved—and therefore “(3) the prevalence of the CML population continuing to take imatinib was dramatically increasing,” taking revenue upward with it [2].