QUOTE

The study, published Tuesday in BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), details how drugmakers, hospitals and cancer doctors make money on unused cancer medicine. It focuses on the top 20 drugs for multiple cancer types packaged in single-dose vials and for which the dose depends on the patient's weight, finding that 1 percent to 33 percent of those 20 cancer drugs, on average, remains in vials after each dose is administered.

Based on the available vial sizes in the U.S., the researchers estimated that makers of those 20 drugs this year will receive an extra $1.84 billion from charges for unused medicine, or about 10 percent of their expected U.S. sale.