CHICAGO - Today there are dozens of cancer drugs that have proved very effective, the trouble is that they are so expensive that few can afford.For years doctors and patients waiting for this type of medicine, eliminate the cancer cells but with much less side effects than traditional chemotherapy. But at great cost.
Prices have gone to heaven, so high that even patients with good health insurance have trouble paying the differential:
Annual Allowance:
Tarceva, for lung cancer: $ 35,000
Herceptin, for breast cancer: $ 38,000
Avastin, for colon cancer: $ 54,000
Eribitux for colon cancer $ 110,000
Examples of the cost of a yearly supply of some of these drugs, imagine, up to $ 110,000 to treat colon cancer.
But why are prices so high? Pharmaceutical companies are refusing to explain how they decide the cost of their products and laws allow them to charge what they please.
Medicare, which covers very few drugs, if you pay those who are for cancer and that they are creating a serious problem. Soon we will see in a situation where he just does not have enough money to pay for these treatments. The experts disagree and believe the cancer drugs the worst problem in the health system. Now for a topic that was once almost exclusively the elderly now increasingly affecting adolescents. One study revealed that more than half of high school students suffer from hearing loss, as educators and politicians recently met to discuss the risks of using music devices like the popular Ipod. Although little has been researched this, experts believe that these devices are the cause of these hearing problems, and are calling for deeper studies are performed.
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