New Prostate Cancer Findings from Duke University Discussed (Systemic Treatments for Advanced Prostate Cancer: Relationship Between Health Insurance Plan and Treatment Costs): Oncology – Prostate Cancer

2024 OCT 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Current study results on Oncology - Prostate Cancer have been published. According to news reporting originating from Durham, North Carolina, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “The high costs of cancer care can cause significant harm to patients and society. Prostate cancer, the leading nonskin malignancy in men, is responsible for the second-highest out-of-pocket (OOP) payments among all malignancies.”

Funders for this research include Urology Care Foundation (UCF) Research Scholar Award Program, Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO), NIH National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from Duke University, “Multiple first-line treatment options exist for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC); although their costs vary substantially, comparative effectiveness data are limited. There is little evidence of how gross payments made by insurers and OOP payments made by patients differ by treatment and health plan type and how these payment differences relate to utilization. Retrospective cohort study. We used IBM MarketScan databases from 2013-2019 to identify men with prostate cancer who initiated treatment with 1 of 6 drugs approved for first-line treatment of mCRPC. We calculated and compared gross and OOP payments and drug utilization across drug and insurance plan types. We identified 4298 patients who met our inclusion criteria. Insurer payments varied substantially by first-line therapy but were similar across different health plan types, except for docetaxel. OOP payments for a given first-line therapy, in contrast, varied by health plan type. Utilization of first-line therapies varied by plan type in unadjusted analyses, but not after adjusting for patient characteristics. The extent to which patient OOP payments for drugs reflect differences in gross payments made by insurers varies across health insurance plan types.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “However, even though OOP payments for the same treatment differ across plan types, treatment choice is not significantly different across type of health insurance after controlling for patient characteristics.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Systemic Treatments for Advanced Prostate Cancer: Relationship Between Health Insurance Plan and Treatment Costs. The American Journal of Managed Care, 2024;30(9). The American Journal of Managed Care can be contacted at: Managed Care & Healthcare Communications Llc, 666 Plainsboro Rd, Ste 300, Plainsboro, NJ 08536, USA.

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Deborah R. Kaye, Duke University, School of Medicine, Dept. of Urology, Durham, NC, United States. Additional authors for this research include Daniel J. George, Charles D. Scales Jr, Hui-Jie Lee, Alexander Gordee, Peter A. Ubel and M. Kate Bundorf.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.37765/ajmc.2024.89606. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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