By Robert Dean
Guest Columnist
I want you to know that I started this op/ed with good intentions. I wanted to sing the praises of a new medical breakthrough:
The FDA approved a significant new treatment for metastatic pancreatic cancer. Rasonque, also known as daraxonrasib, is the first drug designed to block multiple forms of RAS, a protein that drives tumor growth. The daily pill is intended for folks whose cancer has spread and who have received other systemic treatment, or who aren’t candidates for combo therapy. In a 500-patient clinical trial, people taking Rasonque lived a median of 13.2 months, compared with 6.7 months for patients receiving standard chemo—doubling survival. That doesn’t make it a cure, but for pancreatic cancer, which is notoriously aggressive and often diagnosed late, adding months of survival represents a meaningful advance.
Cancer has affected all of us. I lost my grandmother and grandfather to it. My dad has prostate cancer, and one of my close friends has been battling colon cancer for six years. (I am so proud of you, Greg.) What makes me grind my teeth about this breakthrough?
The eye-watering price tag: Rasonque will cost about $39,800 for a 30-day supply, or roughly $477,000 a year before insurance discounts and rebates. Patients may pay far less through Medicare, private insurance, or assistance programs, but the sticker price makes the promise complicated for many families. Because we all know insurance companies are looking out for the little guy.
I am so tired of living in a country where we are kept sick and kept under the boot of profit. Going to the doctor shouldn’t be a gamble with your wallet. Neither should the eye doctor or the dentist. And yet, once again, something that can keep sick people alive is set at a price point dictated by corporate vampires—they take our money and tell us to walk out of the hospital with a massive bill.
We treat lifesaving medicine and care as a luxury product. Everyone deserves medical care regardless of job status or financial burden. As a taxpayer, you deserve not to die sick because Senators and Suits are beholden to shareholder value.
Research involving hepatopancreatobiliary cancers found about 10% of patients delayed medical care because of cost, while 8.4% said they couldn’t afford care. And this isn’t an uninsured-person problem: recent KFF data finds medical debt among 26% of insured adults under 65, too.
America owes at least $220 billion in medical debt. About 14 million Americans owe more than $1,000. We’ve figured out how to double median survival in previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer—but we haven’t figured out how to make survival affordable.
Politicians rally against the idea of taxpayer-funded healthcare, but we need a better system. I don’t want crappy AI fliers for a local restaurant; I want it to help cure disease and make our lives better. I understand technology and science cost money; our taxes should fund that, not war. As AI evolves, I hope it helps us eradicate cancer, MS, and other things killing our people. But right now, as the boardroom gets its pound of flesh, charging someone half a million dollars to fight for their life is predatory. And yet, when someone needs medicine, we’re not pointing back at the drug makers or the insurance agencies; we’re blaming one another for taking up a chair in the waiting room.
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