Posted on 08/14/2009 4:25:25 AM PDT by Schnucki
Charities warned that patients with less common forms of cancer were being discriminated against, while others condemned the system as a “scandal”.
Patients and their doctors can appeal for the NHS to pay for drugs not currently licensed for that type of the disease.
But one in three applications were turned down in the last three years, leaving patients having to pay up £20,000 for the medication themselves.
The Rarer Cancers Forum, who obtained the figures, said that patients in France were up to 55 per cent more likely to get so-called “near-label” treatment, drugs licensed for a similar disease, than those in Britain.
Rare cancers include pancreatic cancer, which Patrick Swayze is currently battling and which affects around 7,000 people in Britain every year.
Stella Pendleton, executive director of the charity, said: “If a doctor thinks that a patient with a rarer cancer should be given a drug, then the NHS should fund it.
“The NHS is forcing desperate patients into the cruel situation where the chances of their being given the treatment they need depend on where they live.
“No patient should be denied a treatment recommended by a doctor simply because the cancer it treats is too rare for the medicine to be licensed.
“We need these obstacles removed.”
Dr Beatrice Seddon, a consultant clinical oncologist at University College Hospital, London said: “When conventional treatment options are exhausted, some patients are still strong enough to be able to continue their fight against cancer.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Just my prediction. You will also see politically-correct rationing in other forms, just as you have seen political correctness in the home loan industry, the awarding of federal contracts, in city hiring decisions, etc. Your health concerns will be thrown in the pool and stirred around until the statistics meet what some panel of bureaucrats think is the perfect fairness rainbow.
More troubling than that, in my mind, is that government health care is an invitation for the government to regulate the behaviors of citizens in the guise of cost-control measures.
We've seen this already with tobacco--one of the trump cards the anti-tobacco lobby likes to play is the cost of treating tobacco-related illnesses. This is important because tobacco-related illenesses most often occur when the user is older and eligible for medicare. When taxpayers are footing the bill for the treatment, taxpayers have a (legitimate) right to dictate how you behave.
So once you open the door to government health care, it becomes about cost control, so all sorts of dangerous things become fair game for regulation--helmet laws, seat belt laws, tobacco, alcohol, fatty foods, salt content, etc.
I don't think it's about smokers to the back of the line--it's "there will not be smokers." Their care is too expensive.
Interesting,,three of the councils turned all requests down and others approved more. So it was purely budgetary. That is what we face.
Turning freely available resources, cancer drugs, into sparse commodities with rationing.
This creates the lifeboat situation that E Emmanuel writes about and the “ethical dilemmas” of who to pay for.
I suspect that here in the US to get any treatment for cancer beyond the proven standard treatment will take a patient right to clinical trials. That is a huge part of treatment now.
But I don’t know that a new system would want trials or that companies would invest in them,,to expensive you know and creates a need and a right for effective new expensive drugs.
Our system will slow and halt. No more new lifesaving drugs will emerge from companies who have no incentive to develope them.
Interesting,,three of the councils turned all requests down and others approved more. So it was purely budgetary. That is what we face.
Turning freely available resources, cancer drugs, into sparse commodities with rationing.
This creates the lifeboat situation that E Emmanuel writes about and the “ethical dilemmas” of who to pay for.
I suspect that here in the US to get any treatment for cancer beyond the proven standard treatment will take a patient right to clinical trials. That is a huge part of treatment now.
But I don’t know that a new system would want trials or that companies would invest in them,,to expensive you know and creates a need and a right for effective new expensive drugs.
Our system will slow and halt. No more new lifesaving drugs will emerge from companies who have no incentive to develope them.
I predict people membership in certain organizations will help you move to the front of the line. Say, do you suppose an Ivy League degree will give you a leg up? After all, that’s a big investment in a life, certainly more than a degree from some community college or a mere high school diploma.
“Allow me to say this: with government health care, there will not only be rationing, there will be politically-correct rationing.”
Of this there is little doubt.
Of note is that political correctness holds on predominantly because the media gives it legitimacy.
He definitely has life challenges because of what happened -will never be able to lie down flat, must eat at specified times many times per day, and the change to his digestion system causes diabetes-like blood sugar fluctuations. He has suffered from chronic kidney stones since he was a young man. But he's alive, and at 73, he enjoys his many hobbies and lives as normal a life as he possibly can.
Esophageal cancer has a terrible survival rate. Had Obamacare existed 15 years ago, my girls would know their beloved grandfather only through pictures.
My husband attended a medical conference in Britain in June. His impression of the conference was that the research presented was all in the area of cost containment and analyzing how well the techs perform the services that a doctor would do here. They rely on the US for true medical advancement.
These councils would qualify as “Death Councils” in my book. Claims that “it isn’t in the bill” are out-right lies, but even if true, every government-run healthcare system winds up in the same place, just by different roads.
The Obamacare supporters still rely on the belief that “our liberals are smarter than their liberals”.....
hh
In addition, the current health care bill allows the government to snoop into your financial situation via electronic health care records. The health care bureaucrat decisionmakers will be packed with democrat hacks and will have the ability to deny treatments in part based on your perceived political/social status. If you think this is far-fetched, think again. Obama is a liar and his communist buddies in congress will see that this happens.
Rare cancers include pancreatic cancer...
**********
Not exactly a rare cancer.
I have been in foreign hospitals twice.
The first was in Spain a few years ago. I went to the cardiac unit with a group and to my surprise it was an open ward with sort of cots and people lying around. The cardiologist was sitting with a cigarette in his mouth and looking at a monitor of something while smoking in the ward.
The second time was with a child with an ear infection. We went in the examing room and there was a roach crawing around. The doc started to look in her ear and she screamed. He kept trying to force the otoscope down her ear and she was yelling so painful was it. I yanked her up, left and went to a pharmacy and got antibiotics without a Rx and treated her.
I don’t want to be ill in a foreign country.
Bingo! Very good. I agree this is what will emerge if the bill passes.
It's not just your prediction. It's a self-evident reality, obvious and irrefutable. And indisputably immoral, but immorality doesn't enter the Democrats' insular little nightmare world.
Absolutely correct! When was the last time a France or UK or Canada for that matter invented anything that was considered a game changer, think PC, iPod, etc
Technological, medical and pharmaceutical advances all require profit to provide capital. Socialist economies do not allow for profit thereby placing the burden on the taxpayers. Ultimately the system collapses under its own weight while the quality of service deteriorates and the country's population are driven to a lower standard of living.
Are you referring to the gun and Bible clingers?
I also think we will have “beginning of life” counselors, who can examine the DNA of potential parents and say “you have too high a risk of passing on cystic fibrosis (or whatever), so if you have a baby, no insurance for you.”
It could well come to that. Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), said: “More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief aim of birth control.” And this gem: “Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”
Bad things can and will happen when “reducing the health care burden” becomes Federal policy.
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