Think Generics Will Lower the Cost of Chemo? Think Again

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Chemotherapy drugs have become ridiculously expensive. Many new drugs come to market costing more than $100,000 per patient for a full course of treatment. Often, patients have to pay a significant portion of these costs. For example, a 20% co-insurance rate, typical for basic Medicare coverage, leaves patients responsible for more than $20,000 of chemotherapy costs, an often crippling burden.
Fortunately, many expensive cancer drugs are going off patent soon, raising hopes that generic alternatives will significantly lower patients’ expenses.
Time to dash those hopes. Or at least generate some caution about just how much generic medications will lower chemo prices. The source of my hope dashing is a study done by Ashley Cole, a PhD student at UNC (a school that has dashed would the hopes of people like me, at Duke, more than a few times).

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