english.prescrire.org > Annual Prescrire Awards > The Prescrire Awards for 2009 > The 2009 Prescrire Awards for Drugs, Packaging and Information > A look back at drug development in 2009 > Pricing and reimbursement: no relation to therapeutic advantage

The Prescrire Awards for 2009

The 2009 Prescrire Awards for Drugs, Packaging and Information

A look back at drug development in 2009: one step forward, two steps back
Pricing and reimbursement: no relation to therapeutic advantage

Prices granted by governments too often bear no relation to the products' concrete therapeutic advantages over existing treatments.

This is especially true for cancer treatments, where patients have high expectations. In 2009, the price granted for gefitinib was equivalent to about 70 euros per day of treatment, despite an unfavourable risk-benefit balance in non small-cell lung cancer (Prescrire Int 102).

A course of temoporfin for upper respiratory tract and gastrointestinal tract cancers costs about 5 727 euros, despite this drug’s uncertain risk-benefit balance (Rev Prescrire 308).

And a dose of ibritumomab costs 10 900 euros , to which must be added the cost of rituximab and yttrium 90, for a total of about 15 700 euros, even though the benefit of this treatment in patients with follicular lymphoma has not been convincingly demonstrated (Rev Prescrire 308).

In 2009, in France, exceptional reimbursement was granted in certain chronic or rare diseases; this included thalidomide in some off-license indications, and products such as sunscreens and sunglasses for patients with xeroderma pigmentosum (Rev Prescrire 316).

©Prescrire April 2010

Source: "A look back at 2009: one step forward, two steps back" Prescrire Int 2010; 19 (106): 89-94.

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