Health Care rationing begins. Have cancer? Go home and die.

[redrumloa]

You were warned.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially.

Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.

“If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”

After an emergency meeting Tuesday, Vacirca’s clinics decided that they would no longer see one-third of their 16,000 Medicare patients.

“A lot of us are in disbelief that this is happening,” he said. “It’s a choice between seeing these patients and staying in business.”

If they do see you, the treatment will based on cost and not best treatment.

AT Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, we recently made a decision that should have been a no-brainer: we are not going to give a phenomenally expensive new cancer drug to our patients.

 

[robert l. bentham]

You were warned.



If they do see you, the treatment will based on cost and not best treatment.

for starters you left out some important parts:

Blame the sequester.




The reasons are simple: The drug, Zaltrap, has proved to be no better than a similar medicine we already have for advanced colorectal cancer, while its price — at $11,063 on average for a month of treatment — is more than twice as high.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Government reducing spending on its socialist programs? That's what you wanted, isn't it?

 

[faethor]

@Redrumola

To backup what Robert said. We're seeing Medical problems completely not related to anything the Gov is doing. Some hospitals are choosing not to stock expensive drugs. Thereby not making those treatments available to patients. This was a financial decision for the hospital. The Gov had no input.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013...ous-hospital-didnt-want-an-expensive-new-drug

 

[cecilia]

"Have cancer? Go home and die" has been true decades longer than Obama has been anywhere near politics.

it's what I expected my entire adult life

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

The real rip-off is private industry. Those new cancer treatments are not worth that kind of money and that's the economic truth. They give less life per buck than other treatments and that is the pharma game. A course of treatments is overpriced way above the price of production (of course) but also above the cost of development. If the high cost was to cover the R&D then Pharma would be less profitable. Profit is what is left over AFTER your costs including R&D. The prices are set at blackmail levels (pay up or you die) not to offset the cost of discovery of new treatments but to increase the share price, increase the dividends and increase executive compensation. Everyone wins ... except the patient.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

This is perhaps a long overdue curb on the insane way drug companies push their pills and rake in the bucks.