teapartysamurai
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- Mar 27, 2010
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The issue at hand is whether or not the drug Avastin should be used to treat late stage terminal cancer patients. The FDA is seeking to de-label Avastin for breast cancer patients. Labeling is the FDAs method of approval for using certain drugs for certain illnesses. Like Medicare, private insurance companies use these labels to determine whether or not they will cover the use of that drug to treat a certain illness.
Fair enough, right? But whats particularly scurrilous about the FDAs attempted actions with Avastin is not that they are attempting to de-label it for use with late stage breast cancer patients its how and why they are doing it.
Standard practice for evaluating drugs is to use data-driven objective endpoints to evaluate effectiveness and safety. In the case of Avastin, the FDA has arbitrarily and unilaterally stopped using this objective criterion and are applying a highly subjective criterion of clinically meaningfulto cut costs.
No one disputes that the drug helps extends life for terminal patients. The FDA is arguing that it just doesnt do it for long enough to be worth the cost. So now the FDA is deciding how much life is meaningful and what it is worth? This should be a decision for patients, doctors and family members and the FDA should not be replacing their own value judgments about how much time is meaningful. While six months might not be significant to a statistician or a bureaucrat, for the families of a loved one or a dying patient, its a lifetime.
As tragic as it is for breast cancer patients today, this arbitrary shift is a preview of one of the tools in the government health care rationing toolbox. The government is not just saying outright that they wont cover the cost of this, they are hiding their financial decisions behind language like clinically meaningful to lead people to believe the drug doesnt work. The Avantis case is setting the precedent for the government to arbitrarily deny coverage to millions of Americans based on cost alone.
ObamaCare: The Government?s Rationing Toolbox Exposed - Big Government
Just give 'em a pain pill, like Obama said!
And then Obamabots say there won't be a death panel. They won't decide who lives and who dies based on the cost?
Looks like there is, and the government is already gearing up to do so.
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