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The agency that runs the Medicare program decided in late March that it will pay for patients to receive an advanced new treatment for prostate cancer called Provenge. The decision was cheered by patient groups. The pressure was intense as they demanded that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) pay for the pioneering vaccine that already had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Early signals indicated the agency might deny payment because the drug is expensive. But Provenge is expensive because it is expensive to make. The drug is created individually using each patient’s own cells...

Newly Approved Drug Extends Lives but Costs Close to $100,000; The Debate in Washington is Whether Medicare Should Pay for It(CBS) More than 217,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year. About 32,000 will die. A newly approved drug can extend lives by several months but at a cost close to $100,000. CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports on Wednesday the debate in Washington was whether Medicare should pay for it. Sal Cicero has advanced prostate cancer his doctors say is fatal. At 67 he's still working as a realtor and for that he credits the drug Provenge....

Medicare advisers give vote of confidence to $93,000 drug Provenge for prostate cancer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Medicare advisers on Wednesday supported the effectiveness of the prostate cancer drug Provenge, an innovative therapy that has prompted questions about the cost of medical care and the government's role in paying for it. The vote by a 14-member panel of outside experts amounts to a recommendation that Medicare pay for Provenge, which costs $93,000 per patient and extends life an average of four months. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will make a final decision on the drug in March, and a...

In 2004, I wrote an article describing how Americans die needlessly because of the FDA’s delay in approving lifesaving drugs.1 One example of a delayed therapy I cited was Provenge®, which in the year 2002 had demonstrated improved survival in prostate cancer patients.2 In 2007, Dr. Stephen Strum and I co-authored an article showing how enormous numbers of lives could be spared if scientists were liberated from oppressive FDA over-regulation. We described several cancer drugs that should have been approved including Provenge®, which by the year 2007 had extended survival in several clinical studies.3 In 2010, the FDA finally approved...

The anticipated approval this week of a therapeutic prostate cancer vaccine by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could be a milestone against the disease and cancer in general, experts say. The vaccine, called Provenge, appears to extend survival in men with advanced prostate cancer, and it does so without the serious side effects associated with chemotherapy, radiation and hormone therapy. "It is certainly exciting to see a drug that has made it this far and appears on the threshold of approval," said Dr. J. Len Lichtenfeld, the deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. The vaccine is...

Oncologists do not usually need bodyguards when they present scientific data at a medical symposium. But when Howard I. Scher of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Maha Hussain of the University of Michigan spoke at the recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, they were in fear for their safety. The two doctors have been at the center of an unusually bitter debate over an experimental therapy for prostate cancer, ever since they helped persuade the Food and Drug Administration to delay approving it, enraging both patients and investors. The first-of-its-kind therapy, called Provenge, is a "vaccine"...