B.C. couple paying for cancer treatment says province should offer help to families facing unknown wait

A Coquitlam, B.C., couple paying out of pocket for cancer treatment is pushing for answers and action from the province while facing an unknown wait for funding approval and a growing expense.

Last week, B.C. Cancer said the funding for a new treatment is under active consideration, but before a decision is made, it’s possible some patients will have to pay.

However, part of the frustration Kari Taylor Atkins and her husband Matthew Atkins are struggling with is that the drug they’re paying for as part of that treatment is already approved in B.C., but they’re only getting 50 per cent covered, leading to an expense of about $1,200 a month.

Taylor Atkins has Stage 4 breast cancer. The disease was discovered to have spread to her liver, bones and brain. She said the new third line of treatment she’s receiving has been making a difference, and she’s been feeling “as well as can be expected”.

“I want to be healthy and happy,” she said Sunday. “And it’s hard when you have that other cloud that is how long can I afford it.”

The new treatment she’s taking involves a combination of three drugs, including one called Herceptin, which has been funded for other types of cancer treatments in B.C. for years.

University of British Columbia clinical professor and oncologist specializing in breast cancer Dr. Joseph Ragaz said the new treatment using Herceptin “looks very promising.”

“That medication (Herceptin) has been around for 20 years, and it’s aimed against patients who have a special gene called HER2,” he said. “Breast cancer patients who have this HER2 positive gene…have more aggressive disease.”

Ragaz said a clinical study led by the Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found the new treatment showed “substantially improved outcomes” for patients.

The international study called HER2CLIMB involved 615 patients in 15 countries. According to the institute, 33 per cent of patients in the group receiving the new drug protocol were alive with no worsening of their disease after a year, compared to 12 per cent in the control group. Among patients whose cancer had spread to the brain, 25 per cent of patients in the new treatment group were alive with no advance of their disease a year later, compared to none in the other group.

The two-year overall survival rate was 45 per cent for patients receiving the new treatment, versus 27 per cent for the control group.

Ragaz said one of the other two drugs, a new medication called Tucatanib, is able to penetrate into the brain more easily and “amplifies” the effect of Herceptin.

He added it didn’t make sense to him that Herceptin would not be covered for Taylor Atkins.

“There’s no reason why she should not be covered for Herceptin. Herceptin is fully approved and covered,” he said. “Funding should not be an issue.”

B.C. Cancer’s provincial medical director for the systemic therapy network, Dr. Helen Anderson, said the new treatment is currently undergoing cost negotiations with the drug companies before a funding decision can be made.

“Obviously everyone in the system is committed to try and get that done as quickly as possible because we recognize that there are people waiting and with cancer you don’t have a long time to wait sometimes,” she said. “If we do fund it as a package, we will make that available to everyone, every patient who will benefit from that in British Columbia.”

Anderson said during the wait for funding approval, it is possible some patients end up paying for treatments.

“There is a gap, “ she said. “And during that time at B.C. Cancer we help people navigate that gap, and then some of the manufacturers do step in and offer drugs through compassionate-access programs.”

Taylor Atkins and Atkins have already tried that avenue for help. The self-employed couple has managed to get the two other drugs in the treatment fully covered by applying for compassionate access, but not Herceptin.

“It doesn’t seem right that in British Columbia we let people die because they can’t afford access to a drug that we have in our publicly funded health care system,” Atkins said. “That’s not right. That’s not what we agreed to when we paid our taxes. That’s not the social contract we have with our leader and with our government and with our health-care system.”

The couple has said their oncologist has even suggested starting an online fundraiser, something they’ve been reluctant to do.

“Having it covered is what’s appropriate,” Taylor Atkins said. “And if you’re not going to do that, help me figure out what the other choices are…the government should at least bear some responsibility to help us figure out what is our next step.”