Do Oncologists Make Money On Chemo Drugs
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Oncologists Were Paid To Prescribe Generic Chemotherapy (Here's Why It Didn't Change A Thing)
I am a physician and behavioral scientist at Duke University.
Cropped image of mature medical doctor in white coat writing a prescription and holding hand ... [+] refusing to take money
Brand-name chemotherapy is often incredibly expensive, in excess of $100,000 per patient. Sometimes there are excellent generic alternatives, but many oncologists are hesitant to prescribe generics because such prescriptions cost them money. For many medicines, you see, oncologists receive a 6% markup, meaning when they infuse a patient with a $10,000 monthly course of chemotherapy, their practice yields an extra $600. By contrast, if the practice treated that patient with a generic chemotherapy, they'd be out most of that extra money.
A private insurer, UnitedHealthcare, tried to incentivize oncologists to prescribe generic chemotherapies by giving them financial bonuses for doing so. For example, a generic medication that would have previously been accompanied by a $12 markup now received a $500 one. That's a lot of money; but, from the insurer's perspective, it would have been more than made up by the savings accompanying the use of the generic drug. (In this case, the brand name drug costs $7,000 more than the generic equivalent.)
Fantastic idea, yes? Unfortunately, it didn't increase generic prescribing one iota. Here's why:
First, the program was voluntary. And the practices that signed up were already bigger than average prescribers of generic chemotherapy.
Second, the incentive was too small. For the drug mentioned above, the generic medication now came with a $500 "thank you," but oncologists were still eligible for $1,400 markups if they prescribed the brand name drug.
My take-home thoughts: First, we need to eliminate the crazy incentives that cause oncologists to prescribe unnecessarily expensive drugs. Second, if loss of that income threatens their practices, we should find other ways to reimburse oncologists that don't lead to such perverse behaviors.
Remember that these expensive brand name chemotherapies often carry high out-of-pocket costs for cancer patients. As I explore in Sick to Debt, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a high out-of-pocket healthcare system. We shouldn't simultaneously burden patients with high out-of-pocket costs while incentivizing physicians to prescribe unnecessarily expensive medications.
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Do Oncologists Make Money On Chemo Drugs
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2020/08/27/oncologists-were-paid-to-prescribe-generic-chemotherapy-heres-why-it-didnt-change-a-thing/#:~:text=For%20many%20medicines%2C%20you%20see,most%20of%20that%20extra%20money.
Posted by: patersonfrok1965.blogspot.com
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