For the study, researchers assessed information on 14,643 women who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 2008 and 2012. These women received chemotherapy within three months of diagnosis. Researchers calculated total costs and out-of-pocket costs using all claims within 18 months of diagnosis. Researchers normalized the costs to 2013 dollars.
The study found that for patients who received trastuzumab, a targeted therapy for the HER2 protein that is over-expressed in certain types of breast cancer cells, the median insurance payments were $160,590. For patients who did not receive trastuzumab, median insurance payments totaled $82,260.
Additionally, for patients who did not receive trastuzumab, the median out-of-pocket payment was $2,724. Meanwhile, patients treated with trastuzumab experienced median out-of-pocket payments of around $3,381.
The authors also noted that using an equally effective but less costly treatment regimen versus the most expensive regimen could reduce national costs of breast cancer care by more than $1 billion annually.
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