Reply to ‘Economic comments on proposal for a novel cancer drug pricing model’

Our proposal identified the key variables in the cost-price calculation of innovative cancer drugs and offered an algorithm for the calculation of a fair price for these drugs. In a correspondence on this article, Nuijten and Vis adhere to the way pharmaceutical companies currently determine the price of anticancer drugs, by applying the principles of free-market economics in the presence of a monopoly.
The authors mainly consider the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately, these authors neglect the immense issues created by the current pricing mechanism, including the issues of sustainability and affordability of cancer drugs. Such issues affect all health-care systems, often resulting in patients being unable to access medicines that they urgently need. [...]