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For what specifically? Medical issues related to smoking or alcohol use? Obesity? What exactly is not available now [in an emergency room] that will justify a radical change in our system?
This is one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever read on CD as part of the health care discussion.
Why not? Because an efficiently run government health plan must set absolutes to keep costs down. As in, "the plan" will not cover "experimental" drugs/treatments. How much would the government have to spend to have a panel of doctor peers review the documentation submitted by individual doctors to ask for an exception to "experimental" drugs/treatments? It is just not going to happen. My source? Common sense and more than 30 years in the medical field.
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Only 11 percent of drugs — and only 6 percent of cancer drugs — that enter clinical testing are ultimately approved; the rest either prove to be too toxic or do not work.
That sounds a lot like the drug referenced in the OP, doesn't it?
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Cancer-related clinical trials cannot accommodate all the patients who want experimental medications, but instead of permitting access after phase 1 testing, a better solution would be to expand treatment IND programs for later-phase drugs, says Bruce Chabner, clinical director of the Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. "Even safety is not resolved" by the end of phase 1, Chabner says. "I don't have a right to fly somebody's experimental airplane, so why should I have the right to some drug that a company has dreamed up?"
Rather than allowing untested medications to be marketed, "we should be promoting and making clinical cancer research normative and part of how we treat cancer," suggests Ellen Stovall, president of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. Only about 5 percent of adults with cancer enroll in clinical trials, Stovall notes, partly because many community oncologists do not encourage participation and because databases of trials are confusing and incomplete. Yet stories like that of Abigail Burroughs resonate with the public. And "public opinion could pass a bad bill," notes Stovall.
Both the bill and the lawsuit suggest that the FDA alone controls access to experimental drugs, but major barriers to access lie beyond the agency's jurisdiction. Manufacturers, for instance, worry about liability, and physicians may not seek such drugs for fear of the FDA paperwork. In addition, Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers generally will not pay for experimental drugs.
As far as I can tell, your "source" of self-proclaimed "common sense" needs a little work--perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the realities of drug trials, rates of toxicity and positive outcomes, and liability.
And...what's this? Now your healthcare experience is 30 years!
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Originally Posted by pommysmommy
I have worked in the medical field for more than 20 years.
As far as I can tell, your "source" of self-proclaimed "common sense" needs a little work--perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the realities of drug trials, rates of toxicity and positive outcomes, and liability.
And...what's this? Now your healthcare experience is 30 years!
As far as I can tell, your "source" of self-proclaimed "common sense" needs a little work--perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the realities of drug trials, rates of toxicity and positive outcomes, and liability.
Perhaps you should brush up on your knowledge of the appeal process with commercial insurers.
Lefties and Dems can spin it how they please. But the truth is out there. And we have already seen people being denied health care and offered assisted suicide instead (the definition of rationed health care if you ask me).
Meet Barbara Wagner:
Barbara Wagner has one wish - for more time.
"I'm not ready, I'm not ready to die," the Springfield woman said. "I've got things I'd still like to do."
Her doctor offered hope in the new chemotherapy drug Tarceva, but the Oregon Health Plan sent her a letter telling her the cancer treatment was not approved.
Instead, the letter said, the plan would pay for comfort care, including "physician aid in dying," better known as assisted suicide.
LOL. Perhaps I did not want to reveal how very ancient I actually am. Get a life.
Or perhaps it wasn't true.
And I am very well aware of the appeals process, dearie, for private insurers as well as Medicaid and Medicare.
And, since you're also a bald cancer patient, please enlighten us on the limits of your own insurance policy: experimental drugs as well as your lifetime limit, and what you plan to do if things go sour in your own treatment.
Do you not think that your own insurance carrier doesn't have a review panel to decide which of your claims to cover?
Private sector insurances do do this but they allow doctors to submit studies/documentation to show that an "experimental" treatment might benefit a particular patient and that goes before a review board of doctors. There are times that "experimental" drugs/procedures have been approved. This will not happen under a government run health care plan.
#1 - UHC will be rationed health care.
#2 - There will be a panel or doctrine deciding who dies, the death panel is not a myth, in some form or shape it will exist and they will decide if you live, die and if death then you are given an option to choose on your own recognizance gov't funded assisted suicide.
#3 - Choice. I'm not convinced that UHC will allow for a private sector. And if no private sector, #1 and #2 get much more worrisome.
Point #1 happens TODAY. No health plan allows unlimited treatment. It cracks me up that earlier there was a post claiming that astrophysicist Stephen Hawking would have been allowed to die under the British UHC system because of rationing of treatment - when in fact Hawking was TREATED under the British UHC - and is alive BECAUSE of his treatment under that plan.
Point #2 is true TODAY with EVERY health insurance provider in the US. Such life and death decision are made virtually every day.
Point #3 is not backed by ANY evidence whatsoever other than your personal paranoia.
Why not? Because an efficiently run government health plan must set absolutes to keep costs down.
And a private for-profit insurance company doesn't?
If anything a private for-profit insurance company is under STRICTER constraints to keep costs down. A government-run can if necessary run a deficit, which is NOT true for a for-profit system. A private for-profit system will go under if it doesn't keep costs down. Your logic is fatally flawed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pommysmommy
How much would the government have to spend to have a panel of doctor peers review the documentation submitted by individual doctors to ask for an exception to "experimental" drugs/treatments? It is just not going to happen. My source? Common sense and more than 30 years in the medical field.
Considering the flawed logic you displayed above, I don't have a lot of confidence in your "common sense" - nor your experience in the medical field.
Ken
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