Recently approved oncology treatments have an average cost of USD $0,000 per month up for ~$5,000 a decade earlier. however, government support to finance these new treatments is limited because of the disproportional costs. It is therefore not surprising to see wealthier economies such as the U.S. and Hong Kong have 25-30% of patients not able to finance their cancer drug treatments and the proportion will be increasing. It is a big burden to low to middle income who fall outside governments’ safety nets. And young patients are particularly vulnerable with our limited resources, and the family may face financial hardship for drug access.
While in HK there are around 1000 new cases for cancer patients below age 30 diagnosed every year. Worldwide, there are larger segments who fight with expensive drug access. The issue is nearly invisible to different health systems.
Financial toxicity of these expensive cancer drugs is a known disaster over the next few years, we as a group of volunteers in Hong Kong is championing a new form of Mutual Health Scheme to redefine pooling to make affordable protection possible for everyone, in particular for our younger generation. Leveraging the technology platform, there are a few Chinese tech giants who proved the mutual model and provide critical illness coverage for over 80m+ people. We are exploring this for Hong Kong in a non-profit setting for our new generation. We believe it is a new form of Universal Health Coverage, not necessary to roll out by the government. No one should be left behind to expensive drug access.
As for our Foundation, WeCareBill is a non-profit that aims to use technology to empower cancer patients in their treatment journeys. Other than expensive drug financing innovation, we also establish drug knowledge database and hotlines help patients to know and to plan their treatments.
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