You are paying for something that is almost completely worthless, and it is located a mere mile and half down the road from our new office in downtown Baltimore.
The price tag: $200 million.
A pair of similar buildings are being constructed about half an hour south in Washington, D.C.
Add to these the 14 others being built — this is on top of the 11 that already exist — and we’re talking about $5.6 billion, if $200 million is a typical price tag.
All of that money is being spent on a single new type of radiation therapy.
Believe it or not, the problem is much bigger than that…
We’re being bilked and paying through the nose for all sorts of new treatments that show little or no improvement over existing therapies (outside of improvements to the profit margins of medical equipment manufacturers and drug companies, of course).
Meet the medical sector’s latest marketing trick in an ongoing arms race for greater profits at your expense.
Hospitals and doctors can’t get enough of it, either. After all, a fancy new $200 million toy is marketing gold for them…
Patients will be asking for it by name, and doctors will sign off on it for their cut.
And in the end, we’ll be on the hook for the tab through Medicare and insurance. Our taxes and insurance premiums will rise for no good reason at all.
Step in Front of the Particle Accelerator, Please…
The facility just a mile and a half from our offices is the Maryland Proton Treatment Center.
At the core of the football-field-sized cement building is a 90 ton piece of equipment called a cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator that accelerates protons until they’re shooting around at two-thirds the speed of light. The stream of protons is then shot towards a tumor.
The concept is that the proton beam is so focused, only the tumor gets irradiated — protecting the surrounding tissue and minimizing side effects. Studies suggest proton therapy may be a good choice for children with brain and spinal cord tumors because it could protect fragile developing organs that are near the cancer, and prevent future developmental delays and secondary tumors.
For everyone else, there’s no clinical evidence that proton therapy treats cancers better or reduces side effects when compared to standard radiation therapy that costs half as much and doesn’t require massive 90 ton particle accelerators.
In December 2012 a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found prostate cancer patients who received proton therapy fared no better than those who received standard radiation treatment.
The particular proton technology used at the Maryland center, called spot scanning, hasn’t undergone any randomized clinical trials at all. There is no reason to believe it will do any better than existing radiation therapy facilities, and no justification for us to fork over our tax money for it.
Same Results, New and Improved Profits
About $50 billion (on average) has been spent every year by U.S. pharmaceutical companies since the mid-2000s to discover new medications. Yet drug makers have barely improved the old standbys developed decades ago.
Another recent study, this time from the journal Health Affairs, perfectly illustrates what is going on by looking at results of drug trials between 1966 to 2010. In the earlier years, drugs easily beat the placebo in trials. They were 4.5 times as effective on average. Then things went downhill…
By the 1980s, drugs were less than four times better… In the 1990s, they were twice as good, and by the 2000s, just 36% better than a placebo.
That would only be a little discouraging if costs were contained. But costs have soared for the new drugs. And there’s been little push-back from doctors or hospitals against the new, more expensive drugs that are being rolled out.
In late 2012, a hospital finally did something that made sense when the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York rejected a colorectal cancer drug that cost twice as much as an existing drug but was not any better.
Hospital officials noted in an article that new cancer drugs cost about $4,500 per month a decade ago, after being adjusted for inflation. Since 2010, the median price of new drugs has hovered at about $10,000, while two of the newest treatments cost more than $35,000 per month of treatment.
Medicare is required to pick up the cost of any cancer treatment approved by a hospital or doctor for a patient.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
It isn’t all doom and gloom, though. There are companies working on novel and inexpensive ways of detecting cancer long before we have to cover the cost of these ridiculously expensive drugs.
One in particular has patented a way to nip a cancer that kills an American every hour in the bud.
When doctors identify oral cancer in the early stages of development, the patient has an 80 to 90% survival rate.
The problem is that doctors often discover oral cancer after it has spread to other areas of the body, such as the lymph nodes, throat, tongue, and lungs.
This new screening method vastly improves results and allows dentists to find precancerous tissue and small tumors far earlier than the old methods. Studies suggest survival rates nearly triple with this new technique.
And when caught early enough, the tissue is simply removed. No chemotherapy, no $35,000 per month bills sent to the government, and no 90 ton, football field-sized particle accelerators bombarding patients for no good reason.
Biotech can be risky but the company that developed the device that makes all this possible has already racked up an impressive list of supporters, all without much notice from investors:
- The FDA and Health Canada have already cleared the technology.
- The World Health Organization has already recognized it.
- The prestigious Pride Institute has named it “Best of Class” twice.
- The National Institute of Health and the BC Cancer Agency have backed it with $50 million.
Over half the dental colleges in the U.S. already own one. Soon, it’ll be outright required in every school and dental office.
Nick Hodge has done extensive research on the device and the company that created it. Be sure to take a gander at his Early Advantage subscription to get the full story on this revolutionary device.
