Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is $3 billion
The New York Times led this morning with a report from BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) showing that pharmaceutical manufacturers are earning extra revenue by packaging injectable oncology and other medications in larger vials. The cost is by the milligram – but any left over must be discarded. For some oncology drugs the waste approaches half of the total dose.
Prices of drugs are not directly related to the price of production of the medication –so requiring the pharmaceutical companies to offer smaller vials could lead to an increased price, so that the pharmaceutical company revenue per patient remained unchanged. That might be true, although the authors noted that vial size available in Europe is often substantially smaller – leading to less wastage.
The chart below shows the excess cost of drug discarded for patients of average weight taking Keytruda, a drug used to treat melanoma. The manufacturer has announced that it will stop making the 50mg vials, so the total wastage will substantially increase.
