Courtesy of Dr. Paul Price at Beating Buffett
The Associated Press reported yesterday [3/31] that Medicare officials will now pay the $93,000 cost of the prostate cancer drug Provenge- a therapy that gives men suffering from incurable prostate cancer an extra four months to live.
The article also noted that Medicare is legally prohibited from considering price when deciding whether to pay for a new treatment. Medicare (typically) automatically covers drugs cleared by the FDA as “reasonable and necessary” medicine.
Bioethicists said this ruling reinforces the bias of the overall U.S. health system towards paying for expensive end-of-life treatments at the expense of more basic medical care.
Nobody wants to be the decision maker condemning a terminal patient to death a few months earlier than might be possible. What’s ignored, though, is that funds for treatment for the entire population are finite. If these near-death patients gain up to four months of poor quality of life it comes at the expense of denying billions of dollars of other, more routine care to younger, other beneficiaries that have real long-term prospects for productive lives.
There is no free lunch. Keeping someone alive for an extra 120 days could end up depriving thousands of people their basic health care needs. That our system is designed to prevent any cost/benefit analysis is absurd and ultimately dangerous to the health of the majority of Americans.
Dr. Paul Price at www.BeatingBuffett.com, www.OptionsProfits.com
See also: The Poster Child For Medical Hell
