A particularly offensive statement - to me - is their twisted use of the phrase "death with dignity."
Thread by Kaslin.
Medicine: After the recess appointment of a Medicare and Medicaid head, an FDA panel drops its endorsement of a widely used cancer drug. Another FDA-approved cancer therapy may not be paid for. It begins.
It didn't take long for the health care philosophy of Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and an appointee we have labeled a "one-man death panel," to have an effect.
Berwick is an admirer of Britain's National Health Service and its National Institute for Clinical Excellence, with the Orwellian-acronym NICE.
"NICE," Berwick has said, "is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable and — importantly — knowledge-building system." But NICE is really a system of rationing, through a bureaucratic formula for "cost-effectiveness," that has rushed untold numbers of Britons to an early grave.
Avastin, the marketing name for the drug bevacizumab, is the world's best-selling cancer drug. Used mainly to treat colon cancer, it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 after it was found that by cutting the blood flow to tumors, it helped in treating breast cancer.
An estimated 17,500 American women are treated with the drug each year. It is effective, having been shown to extend life by at least 20 months, but it is not cheap.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...