Nearly $50,000 a week for a cancer drug? A man worries about bankrupting his family

Paul Davis is a retired physician in Findlay, Ohio, who gets weekly treatments of the drug Kimmtrak to help stave off the progression of his rare cancer — uveal melanoma. He worries the accumulating cost of the drug — nearly $50,000/week if he has to pay it out of pocket — could saddle his family with crushing medical debt after he's gone. (Maddie McGarvey for KHN)

After several rounds of treatment for a rare eye cancer — weekly drug infusions that could cost nearly $50,000 each — Paul Davis learned Medicare had abruptly stopped paying the bills.

That left Davis, a retired physician in Findlay, Ohio, contemplating a horrific choice: risk saddling his family with huge medical debt, if he had to pay those bills from the hospital out-of-pocket, or halt treatments that help keep him alive.