Leonard Slatz, MD — Chief, Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Medical Center

Leonard Slatz, MD — Chief, Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Credit: www.mskcc.org

As the one-year cost of cancer drugs edges up to $200,000 per patient, (emphasis added) a top doctor from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center used his speech before a massive gathering of colleagues to call for limits on the cost of cancer therapies.

“These drugs cost too much,” gastrointestinal oncologist Leonard Saltz said in an unusual speech Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.

“We need to first accept that there has to be some upper limit as to what we as a society are going to be willing to spend on a patient, and we have to be willing to engage in that discussion,” Saltz told Bloomberg in an interview from the meeting in Chicago. “It’s a very uncomfortable discussion. We should be willing to have it. Because we’re not having the conversation, only the people selling the drugs are weighing in on what they should cost.”

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