Mike Rowse A voice from New Mexico

“We won’t ration healthcare”

That’s what Glorious Leader said. We won’t tell people what treatment they can or cannot get. We won’t get in between the doctor/patient relationship. All things promised by GL when he shoved health insurance reform down our throats. But now here comes another warning shot. The FDA is taking the anti-cancer drug Avastin “off-label” which means Medicare and now most insurance plans won’t pay for it. Avastin is a late stage drug used to treat several types of cancer by blocking growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. It has been very effective in treating some types of cancer but not as effective in treating breast cancer. Generally it will extend the life of a late stage breast cancer sufferer 5 months or a bit more.

So what does this mean? A couple of things: right now even if you meet the criteria to be treated with Avastin unless you can pay for it out of pocket, you won’t get the drug and you’re life won’t be extended. What happened that things changed? Dr Richard Pazdur, the FDA’s cancer czar, altered the criteria used to judge the effectiveness of a drug. Traditionally the FDA has made decisions based upon the effectiveness of the drug or treatment and have not included cost. Now Dr. Padzur is using the standard known as “Clinically Meaningful.” It is much more subjective and does include a cost/benefit analysis.

Basically Dr. Padzur is telling patients and their families that 5 months of additional time with your mother, sister, daughter suffering from breast cancer is not clinically meaningful; does not meet his cost/benefit analysis and thus he will not pay for the drug. I wonder how you put a price tag on the additional time a family member gets to spend with their loved ones? Now we have an idea.

Quite simply, this is exactly what we said was going to happen under Obamacare; a bureaucrat determining what treatment you would receive. Sadly this time we were right.