The cost of cancer care is rising fifteen percent a year, according to a recent MSNBC article. 

The price tag on cancer treatment is sending many patients, families, and even doctors into sticker shock.  Price of cancer treatment, primarily chemotherapy drugs, is now weighing heavily on patients' choice of care.  For example, two equally effective colon cancer drugs cost a difference of $60,000; whereas the cheaper causes hair loss, the more expensive can lead to nerve damage in hands.  According to many doctors, price is now considered a side-effect of drugs: when selecting treatments, patients consider the cost just as they would nausea, hair loss, and nerve damage, for example.   Dr. Neal J. Meropol of Philadelphia’s Fox Chase Cancer Center says he has seen patients calculate costs, such as a colon cancer patient who asked to switch from oral chemo to cheaper but more laborious intravenous chemo, or a woman who refused a pricey anti-nausea drug that would make her chemo more bearable.

The only up-side of rising cancer costs is drug companies' ability to donate medication to prescription-assistance programs that provide them for free to patients who otherwise couldn’t pay.  Programs like “Partnership for Prescription Assistance" have assisted about 5 million people since 2005 in obtaining costly care.

Prices are typically omitted from drug fact sheets, so doctors are sometimes unaware of the costs to patients. But because of the rising prices, doctors are now being trained in how to approach the matter of price with patients.