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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

Novartis also produces Glivec, which turned my dad's GIST stomach cancer(which normally has <1 year survival prediction) to living for over 8 years cancer free now. Good thing we live in a country which pays for the treatment,as my dad has to take two boxes a month, and they are ~$3000 each.

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"Gleevec became a breakthrough, helping almost every patient with a particular rare blood cancer, chronic myelogenous leukemia. Patients stay on it for years, and it is so valuable that Novartis has quadrupled its annual price from $24,000 per year in 2001 to more than $90,000 today. Even the stingiest insurers pay, though some patients get it free."

I am also in a country where you don't have to choose between pay or die, and I'm thankful for that. Seeing this kind of thing in print certainly makes you look twice and appreciate what you have.

Unfortunately I'm in the U.S. and if I had to pay $3,000 per box of that medicine (at 2 boxes a month) I would have to die because I simply do not make that much money. It's literally more than 100% of my entire income. I'm jealous, lol.

Under Obamacare, your annual out-of-pocket maximum would be $6,350. You still have to pay the Obamacare premium on top of that. But the end result is that you would only have to pay about 10% of the $92,000 annual list price of Gleevec.

Note that grandfathered plans are not subject to the out-of-pocket maximum until 2015.

P.S. Remember to vote in the 2014 and 2016 general elections if you live in a swing state.

> if you live in a swing state

This is toxic to democracy. People should vote no matter the state where they live otherwise it is only a tiny sliver of the swings that decided who rules the country and this allows for the money influx because you only have to buy/brainwash that sliver.

If a modern democracy manages to have 80% voter turnout you will be surprise how many safe seats will be not so safe.

So just vote - no matter where you live. It is your civil duty.

> If a modern democracy manages to have 80% voter turnout you will be surprise how many safe seats will be not so safe.

Are you suggesting that "people who decide to vote" is not a representative sample of the whole population? I am not sure of that, and a quick Google search shows mixed results.

> So just vote - no matter where you live. It is your civil duty.

I feel no loyalty to my country. I don't give a crap about civil duty. Most people I interact with feel the same way.

> If a modern democracy manages to have 80% voter turnout you will be surprise how many safe seats will be not so safe.

I really want to believe that's true, but I'm skeptical. Do you have any sort of research backing that up?

lol is an odd response to your situation...

Hmm. $90,000 per year. Looks like people in developing world like India are out of luck.

Or in a fully developed country where you don't have insurance, or if it doesn't cover it. In my country(Poland) it's fully covered by the national insurance,which is not very expensive,and if you are poor you don't have to pay anyway - and are still fully covered.

Another interesting fact that Gleevec turned novartis around. but that patent expires soon. There was a patent battle they lost in India w.r.t. "evergreening" gleevec i.e. a small change in the drug that would help them repatent it.

Shockingly they wanted to keep the price tag of ~3000$ you quoted which is > 95% of the population's gross annual income.

My dad takes a drug for IPF a scarring of his lungs and it's about $50,000 per year

We also don't live in the US but he is lucky the drug company and his insurance pay 90% otherwise he'd be dead by now.

So... not the US.

Including the US, for now. Under Obamacare, there is a $6,350 annual out-of-pocket maximum. There is also cost-sharing for people with low incomes.

However, Obamacare is guaranteed to remain in effect only so long as the Democrats retain control of the Senate and the Presidency. If the Democrats lose one of them, then it will depend on whether certain vacancies open up on the Supreme Court. If they lose both, then that's the end of Obamacare.

It's in Poland. There is no out-of-pocket maximum - my dad pays literally nothing for the drug. He also had to have two operations to remove parts of his stomach,and then stay at hospital for a month at a time - also paid nothing. He also doesn't have to pay national insurance because due to his illness he qualifies for an exemption. Even if he didn't, he would pay less than $1000 a year for national insurance.

I didn't say that your father lived in the US. I was pointing out that "pays for the treatment" does not exclude the US, as Florin_Andrei seems to think.

I understand you're having a visceral reaction to the out-of-pocket maximum. But for the patient who has to take Gleevec for the rest of his life, it does not matter if he pays $1 for the premium and $10,000 for the medication, or $10,000 for the premium and $1 for the medication. It's the same $10,001 either way. It's just a matter of what you call it.

I think it's great that Poland reduced the premium to $0 for your father. But patients in many other countries still have to pay the premium even after they get sick. And nobody would say that their insurance refused to "pay for the treatment" just because it did not waive the premium. It becomes a matter of degree, not of principles.

The US still has the most expensive healthcare even after Obamacare. But at least it is now on the extreme end of the spectrum of universal health insurance. It is no longer off the charts.

> Including the US, for now. Under Obamacare, there is a $6,350 annual out-of-pocket maximum. There is also cost-sharing for people with low incomes.

For someone like the OP's dad, US is still not included. The $6k would cover, what, a month or two?

The out-of-pocket maximum is the maximum amount that the patient will pay before the insurer takes on the rest of the costs. Even if someone needs $100k/yr medication, he should only have to pay $6,350 per year for it.

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