Posted on 02/26/2011 6:13:45 AM PST by Kaslin
Influenced by the president’s mandate to “bend the health care cost curve,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is preparing to deny late-stage breast cancer patients access to the critical, but expensive, life-extending drug Avastin. The FDA wants to “de-label” the drug, a move that would force patients with insurance or Medicare coverage to pay for the drug out of their own pocket in order to survive. Now patients groups are speaking out.
Led by the Susan B. Komen Foundation for a Cure, 15 patient advocacy groups have petitioned the FDA to reverse their effort to ration the drug. In a letter to the FDA, Elizabeth Thompson, the organization’s President, expresses concern over the potential negative impact that the FDA’s decision will have on women who are benefiting from Avastin:
"We know that for some number of women, Avastin works and works well. We have heard from women who are gaining not just months, but years with a high quality of life, from this treatment.
We are concerned about the potential impact on women who are benefiting from Avastin if the FDA ultimately removes its approval for the drug for metastatic breast cancer treatment. We want to be sure that women who are using Avastin, and for whom it is working, can continue to have access to it, and that their insurers will continue to pay for it...
Today, the issue is Avastin. In the coming years, there will be other treatments that may be controversial but will help some number of women and men with breast cancer live longer, high quality lives, and perhaps to ‘beat’ breast cancer altogether…[w]e must make it possible for these treatments to be available to all who will benefit from them. The decision on Avastin is precedent setting and deserves to be considered in a public setting."
The Avastin case is the rationing camel nose under America’s health care tent. Should the FDA successfully introduce cost into the drug approval process, the long-term implications will be enormous. It will not be breast cancer patients alone who will suffer. Avastin is first step on the slippery slope toward rationing. The FDA’s action is dangerous and cannot stand.
Fortunately, Judge Vinson’s ruling that ObamaCare is unconstitutional has temporarily given hope that we may reverse course before it is too late. While Vinson’s decision finds Obamacare’s individual mandate unconstitutional, it strikes down the entire law as the mandate is not severable from the full legislation.
Like the individual mandate, FDA rationing is a flawed (some might say lazy, dishonest, or inhumane) attempt to lower Obamacare’s alarming financial cost. But both come with heavy price tags, nonetheless. While the mandate will cost jobs and wages, FDA rationing will cost lives that could otherwise be extended, improved, or even saved. We simply cannot afford the real cost of ObamaCare.
Vinson’s decision makes clear ObamaCare implementation by state and federal officials should immediately cease. The Cato Institute’s Mike Cannon and Ilya Shapiro, in a devastating column in the Providence Journal note:
"In ruling as he did, Judge Vinson wrote that “it must be presumed that federal officers will adhere to the law as declared by the court.” Yet the Obama administration has thus far shown no inclination to do so. But neither has it sought to stay the practical effects of the ruling — perhaps because it thinks that doing so would give credence to the court’s decision."
Sadly, the Obama Administration appears to be making calls out of President Andrew Jackson’s playbook. America’s seventh President reportedly once said about a Supreme Court ruling that Georgia could not impose its laws upon Cherokee tribal lands, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"
Rather than adhering to Judge Vinson’s ruling or request a stay, the Obama Administration is instead requesting a ‘clarification’ of the decision, a thinly veiled attempt to run interference for ObamaCare’s supporters to continue moving forward with implementation of the law. Like its attempts to use the Environmental Protection Agency to bypass Congress in issuing politically unpalatable energy and environmental regulations, the Administration is showing a blatant disregard for the Constitutional separation of powers in ignoring Judge Vinson’s ruling.
Even with Vinson’s decision, the fight is not over and ObamaCare advocates may ultimately prevail, FDA health care rationing and all. The case is expected to move to the 11th Circuit Court by this summer. Efforts are even underway to expedite consideration by the Supreme Court. Until, then, however, it is clear ObamaCare implementation must be put on hold. We do still live in a nation of laws, after all.
Mr. President, Judge Vinson has made his decision, now you have to enforce it!
Hopey Changy!
Yet 90% of the people who would suffer are still going to vote for him in 2012.
AND SO IT BEGINS. Operative word......BEGINS.
You aint seen nothin yet.
Yes, and I’m willing to bet money that about half of breast cancer patients are democrats but they will still vote for the obummer in 2012. Demorats are zoombies for sure.
50% is probably a safe number to be on dims who are ready to sacrifice themselves to the wun and the party who don’t care about them anyway without a thought.
Yes, and I’m willing to bet money that about half of breast cancer patients are democrats but they will still vote for the obummer in 2012. Demorats are zoombies for sure.
Not necessarily ‘zombies’, more like martyrs for the ‘cause’.
We should have learned by now that what he accuses somebody else of, is what he's about to do.
Obama makes me sick!...and there is no cure as long as he is in office!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ve said all along that the Obama true believers who think this so-called health reform is a good thing aren’t going to find out how wrong they are until they are affected themselves. Just wait till they need health care, and they can’t get it.
The options are:
Medicare patients will pay for it out of their own pocket, or
Taxpayers will pay for it with the threat of imprisonment if they refuse.
Take your choice, there are no magic unicorns who will defecate bottles of the drug.
But I have to ask, why does the FDA have this power? If my wife needed this drug and we had a prescription for it, then what right does the FDA have to tell me that I cannot go to a pharmacy and pay cash for this drug?
I hope the single women who support 0bama to the hilt take a note of this. Health care for women costs a lot more than it does for men, and once the government cuts what little is spent on men, it realizes the next target of "savings" is women.
The pro abortion / Planned parenthood supporting Susan B Koman group is fighting with fellow leftists !
And now we see why physicians need to provide death counseling.
Why call it ObamaCare it should be called ObummerCare. Because it is a real bummer for some people now. Eventually it will be a bummer for everyone. Avastin a drug used by women with breast cancer is also used by others whom have cancer. So now Obummer has decided that the cost of the medication is more important than giving some women the ability to live longer.
In the extended family relation that I am part of, one of the women suffered breast cancer, she went through the appropiate treatments was deemed cancer free for 3 years, she went through 4 years of struggling to survive, she saw her 2 oldest sons graduate high school and marry, she tried till her youngest her daughter was to graduate from high school, but she did not make it.
this will become the status quo for America.
does everyone know why Obama wants this is because his own mother died of cancer. But he forgets that she was out of the country, basically in some third world country that had poor medical care. By the time his mother got to America for medical care there was little that could be done for his mother. So all of America has to be punished because his own mother died because of her own recklessness. Just like he is angry that when he could not afford the birth of his first child that is why a pregnancy is a punishment and he had a bill of some 700.00 to pay the hospital bill. gee Obama a birth of a child is not a punishment it is a gift from God.
In our family we remember the lose of our sister to breast cancer. Yes whenever one of the extended family has a child we rejoice in the gift of the child.
When all those “bennies” get cut it’s actually going to be fun to watch the obama worshippers heads explode.
Sadly, about half the people in this country still don’t get it or refuse to admit they were wrong.
We’re lucky that they picked on a breast cancer drug first. That’s a tactical mistake by the socialists.
You don’t see too many “walks for prostate cancer.” Dead white men are unpopular these days.
“Breast Cancer Fundraising” google hits: 1,560,000
“Prostate Cancer Fundraising” google hits: 343,000 hits
2010 Breast cancer deaths: 40,230
2010 Prostate cancer deaths: 32,050
Go get ‘em, ladies!
“Not necessarily ‘zombies’, more like martyrs for the ‘cause’.”
Actually they are clueless useful idiots. The MSM will never tell them so you have to figure those who do not get their news off the internet will never learn of this. It will be only when it is too late that they will figure it out.
bump
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