NBC’s Tom Brokaw On The Incredible Effectiveness of His Cancer Drugs & How to Tackle The Debate on Price

Revlimid — or lenalidomide — is a pill that has helped transform the treatment of multiple myeloma.  In newly diagnosed patients, standard doses of lenalidomide, in combination with other therapies, is used to kill myeloma cells. Later on in treatment, low doses of lenalidomide is used to keep the immune system on high alert in case the cancer begins to come back following chemotherapy.

But these groundbreaking drugs are not cheap — and Brokaw is keenly aware of that saying, “I have a blessing of having a great [health insurance] program … so the checks that I write for pharmacy are very, very small. Every time I do that, it makes me aware of the people who are not in the same position as I am, and how I think about them.”

Brokaw realizes that most people facing a cancer diagnosis have a very different experience. “An extraordinary amount of progress has been made with drugs and treatment,” Brokaw says. “We haven’t gotten the cost thing worked out yet.”

He called on the American people to work together to find a way to make great healthcare available to everyone. “How do we deal with this as a culture? Not the politics of it, but as a culture. We have the ability to do it; we have the greatest resources in the world. Let’s figure out how we can make it cost effective, how we can have a true testing program for efficiency and results, and that people will have access to those results.”

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