A cancer diagnosis is a hard enough moment on its own.
Then the conversation turns to how much it will cost to fight the disease.
“The doctor was very quick in telling us . . . it’s very treatable but it’s very expensive,” Derek Lesser said in recounting Sept. 9, 2014, the day he and his daughter Julia were told she had chronic myeloid leukemia.
Julia Miller, then 22 and about to start her nursing program at Dalhousie University, was prescribed Tasigna, the brand name for the oral cancer drug nilotinib, which came with a price tag of about $49,000 annually.
As a school administrator, Lesser’s health insurance would have covered Miller except she was over the plan’s age rules. And as a Dalhousie student she would have been covered by the university’s insurance plan but she had yet to receive her medical forms. “That was happening the week after, so because it’s pre-existing, they won’t allow her to get the drug (covered),” Lesser said in an interview from his office at Yarmouth Consolidated School on Monday afternoon.
“It was too many shocks all in one day.”
Eventually the family was told that since Millerwas a student with an income of less than $22,000, she would qualify for the provincial Family Pharmacare program, which
covers Tasigna.
“So with the timing (of her program), we knew she could have it for four years for free,” Lesser said, “so our approach to government was, we need to fix this in four years for her sake but I’m also thinking of every other family out there who might be fighting this.”
Miller has responded well to the treatment and her leukemia has been in remission since 2015.
With the help of family friend and local MLA Zach Churchill, the family lobbied the province for years to expand coverage of cancer drugs.
“We kind of starting losing hope that things were moving anywhere,” Lesser said. “During the (spring election) campaign . . . we came out swinging pretty hard, saying that the government had failed us.
“Whatever happened behind the scenes, in the fall they announced it in the budget.”
The family’s persistence was rewarded this month when the take-home cancer drug program was launched. Retroactive to April 1, 2017, patients will pay no more than four per cent of their net family income for their drugs.
“This fund will help Nova Scotians who are facing exceptionally high costs for take-home cancer drugs focus on their health instead of their medical expenses,” Health and Wellness Minister Randy Delorey said in a news release Monday.
The program only covers drugs for chemotherapy, hormonal therapy and immunotherapy on the provincial Pharmacareformulary that are used to treat the cancer. Itdoes not cover supportive drugs such as anti-nausea and pain medications.
“Some of these new drugs are remarkably effective,” said Dr. Daniel Rayson, head of medical oncology at the QEII Health SciencesCentre, in an interview Monday.
“Even for patients where we can’t cure the cancer, it can help them live well with the cancer and that’s a huge number of patients. Definitely those patients will be impacted, their outcomes will be better, their quality of life should be better, they will live longer, even if they can’t cure their cancer.”
The Department of Health and Wellness has budgeted $846,000 for the take-home cancer drug program for this fiscal year, with $2 million set aside in each of the next three years.
Rayson said it’s not the first time the province has covered these kinds of drugs, which can cost up to $7,000 per month.
“Previously it’s been a cherrypicked, this drug for this disease for this patient, yep, we’ll cover but these other drugs we won’t,” he said. “This program potentially helps everybody who is a resident of Nova Scotia, who’s prescribed an approved drug under Pharmacare. . . . It doesn’t cherry-pick anymore.”
