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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Tangentially related to melanoma.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/moderna-says-pers...

> Moderna says personalized mRNA cancer vaccine is effective for advanced melanoma

> The company said that in a phase 2 clinical trial, the vaccine, when combined with immunotherapy drug Keytruda, reduced the risk of recurrence by 44%.

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Yeah, except you need to send your specific individual melanoma off for analysis, and the vaccine costs thousands of dollars, if you can even get it.

This is still cheaper than death, and progress must start somewhere. The first human genome cost ~$1B 30 years ago, and now one can get a full sequence for sub $1000. Be optimistic! mRNA is going to revolutionize personalized cancer treatments.

Of course. My point is more that it doesn't work retroactively for people who've had melanoma in the past, because it needs to be tailored. It's not like you can have one generic shot which protects against all melanoma.

Thousands of dollars is better than no solution.

It's a magnitude cheaper than chemo and radiation.

Not to mention the side effects of the treatment, which can often be chronic.

So I spent this summer dealing with skin cancer and while my out of pocket was only about $20,000 the bill was well into the six figure range and this was just getting cut up not chemo or any other drug. We saw the same thing with the drug for hepititus, when it came out it was $100K and insurance companies were refusing to pay and now it's something like $30K so prices drop quickly once it becomes normalized.

Would you be willing to share why you were charged $20k?

I'm interested in projecting my health care expenses in retirement and I've heard of healthcare costs exceeding out of pocket max, but it's rare that I get to actually ask!

out of pocket and out of network specialists. There was one specialist that wasn't in my plan and that cost me about $10K. Frankly it's worth it to me to get the best person I can find and pay for it than getting someone sub par but covered by my insurance.

Thank you for sharing. I didn't realize that insurance wouldn't cover or reimburse you for out of network once you are over the out of pocket max.

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