{"id":11920,"date":"2026-03-10T22:45:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T22:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=11920"},"modified":"2026-03-10T22:45:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T22:45:24","slug":"payers-and-targeted-therapy-in-oncology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=11920","title":{"rendered":"Payers and targeted therapy in oncology"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was quoted in a recent article in Pharmaceutical Technology<\/em> titled \u201cTargeted therapies to join chemo as oncology treatment backbone<\/a>\u201c. An excerpt is below: <\/p>\n

Though payers could theoretically prioritise chemotherapy over the use of targeted treatments due to their lower price, Jason Shafrin, senior managing director of FTI\u2019s Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy, notes that reducing cost is not a payer\u2019s whole goal. \u201cIt\u2019s also about using resources in the best way to improve patient health outcomes; payer decisions will depend on a therapy\u2019s benefit-to-cost ratio,\u201d he says.
In the US, Shafrin believes that private payers are generally more likely to allocate funds to high-cost oncology therapies \u2013 including medicines given the greenlight through accelerated approval pathways \u2013 over drugs in other areas like cardiovascular disease. This is mostly due to the acute severity of many cancer indications, as well as their \u201cimmediate and life-threatening consequences\u201d.
However, Shafrin does acknowledge a discrepancy between the risk appetite of patients and payers. \u201cMany patients will take the risk on a treatment with a potential upside, but payers will often want to know a drug works for sure before reimbursing,\u201d he says.
Shafrin also notes the importance of considering a therapy\u2019s cost on both the patient and system-wide levels. \u201cA lot of targeted cancer therapies are high cost, but they are often only suitable for a smaller patient population who express a specific biomarker,\u201d he says. \u201cAs you only use these therapies in a smaller group of patients, the total cost to the system is not necessarily as much as, for example, a cardiovascular drug you\u2019d use across a large population,\u201d Shafrin adds.
According to Shafrin, the level of conservatism demonstrated in payer decisions can also depend on geography. \u201cIn Germany, payers are quite strict with cancer therapy reimbursement, as these drugs will often have to show OS benefits to gain coverage.\u201d He contrasts this with the approach of US payers, who he says are increasingly open to accepting established surrogate endpoints as proof of efficacy.
As companies increasingly shift their focus to\u00a0create oncology drugs that are more convenient for patients<\/a>, Shafrin does not believe that the administration route will significantly impact payer decisions moving forward. <\/p>\n

You can read the full article here<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was quoted in a recent article in Pharmaceutical Technology titled \u201cTargeted therapies to join chemo as oncology treatment backbone\u201c. An excerpt is below: Though payers could theoretically prioritise chemotherapy over the use of targeted treatments due to their lower price, Jason Shafrin, senior managing director of FTI\u2019s Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy, notes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11920"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}