Any woman reading this should find this post pretty disturbing. Death panels & rationing has hit the breast cancer front. From the Washington Examiner:
"OnFriday, the Food and Drug Administration could doom thousands of breast cancer victims. The FDA will be considering the unprecedented step of revoking approval for Avastin, a drug that represents the last hope for women with late-stage breast cancer. About 17,500 women a year are treated with the drug, which cuts off blood flow to tumors. It does not cure cancer, but it does stop its growth and extend life.
Doctors and patients were then stunned last summer when the ODAC ruled, by a vote of 12-1, that the drug did not produce clinically meaningful results. Why did the panel deny the obvious evidence of Avastin's effectiveness? One member of the FDA's panel, Jean Grem of the University of Nebraska, said, "We aren't supposed to talk about cost, but that's another issue."
The Obama administration wants to ration health care in order to help pay for universal coverage and other Obamacare goodies. Donald Berwick, Obama's controversial nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has explicitly endorsed rationing. The CMS is now considering whether to refuse Medicare payments for Provenge -- another expensive but effective late-stage prostate cancer treatment.
Government bean counters were never supposed to determine what your treatment options are, and patient advocacy groups are justifiably outraged. If Avastin and other expensive wonder drugs are denied approval because of costs, proponents of government-run health care will have to no choice but to admit "death panels" have gone from rhetoric to reality."
This bears repeating: with the Federal Government's track record of bungling things like Social Security, Education, and the Post Office, why on God's green earth would you want it handling health care?? That's doesn't even make bad sense!
Background Reading:
Washington Examiner: Examiner Editorial: Breast cancer drug offers glimpse of death panels
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