Prostate Cancer Therapy Too Good to Be True Explodes Health Cost

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-26/prostate-cancer-therapy-too-good-to-be-true-explodes-health-cost.html

Imagine a prostate cancer therapy that has almost no side effects. Hospitals say it exists and they’re vying to be among the first to offer it. Too bad the treatment may not work as well as advertised and could boost America’s already spiraling health-care costs.

The technology uses narrowly focused proton beams to deliver precisely targeted blasts of radiation. The particle beams are delivered by 500-ton machines in facilities that cost from $100 million to $200 million, and can require a football- field sized building to house. A typical treatment costs about $50,000, twice as much as traditional radiation therapy though it is usually covered by Medicare or private insurance.

For U.S. taxpayers and employers facing spiraling health- care costs, that’s a worry.

“Proton-beam therapy is like the death star of American medical technology; nothing so big and complicated has ever been confronted by the system,” said Amitabh Chandra, a health economist at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “It’s a metaphor for all the problems we have in American medicine.”