Segment 10 - Paying for Combination Therapies

Michael Kolodziej, MD, considers the benefit of combination therapy vs sequential and whether the increased toxicity of combination therapy is worth it.

If there are promising results for combination therapies, the payers will have to figure out the best population for the therapy and how it will be paid for, he said.

“I think there is a common misconception that when payers make coverage policy decisions, and I can speak only about oncology because I do not know about anything else, that they look at the price tag first and the evidence second,” he said. “That is really not how it works. So, I think the evidence is looked at first and then you start thinking about ‘how do we manage the cost?’”