Medicare Will No Longer Cover Expensive Drug for Brain Cancer

Roughly 700,000 Americans are living while diagnosed with a primary brain tumour. Brain cancer is not something light at all, and the ways of fighting it may never be enough.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the seller of Gleostine, which is a brain-cancer drug, has pulled out of a discount program for Medicare patients. This results in some patients needing to pay even $1,000 per capsule.

Dr. Patrick Wen, who is director of the Center for Neuro-Oncology from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, declared while cited by The Wall Street Journal:

The problem is that patients with this terrible tumor now no longer have easy access to one of the few approved chemotherapies.

However, there’s still some good news up ahead, as patients also have the possibility of seeking financial guidance from Nextsource, while doctors can explore treatment alternatives that are less expensive.

The median age when it comes to diagnosis for primary brain tumours is 60 years old. As for the average survival rate when it comes to all primary brain tumour patients, it’s somewhere around 75%.

According to cancer.net, the 5-year survival rate is 36% for patients with a cancerous brain or CNS tumour. As survival rates decrease with age, the 5-year survival rate for patients younger than age 15, for instance, is over 75%.