Let the Rationing Begin

Actually this is the second shot, the first involved the kids (Egalitarianism Doing the Opposite of What It Sets Out To Do), but this snowball will get bigger and bigger as time goes on.

ObamaCare: The Rationing Begins in Earnest

This is the first shot in the health care revolution.

On Thursday the Food and Drug Administration will try to take the anti-cancer drug Avastin “off-label.” Avastin is a Stage 4 drug used to battle breast cancer. Avastin is not a cure but has been shown to stop the growth of cancer for an average of five months — meaning some late stage breast cancer victims live beyond five months.

But late stage breast cancer patients do not fit into the cost-benefit analysis of the Obama Administration. We told America rationing would happen if the health care takeover bill passed and Thursday women with breast cancer will be its first victims.

Avastin is the first medicine to fight cancer by blocking the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. While Avastin is expensive and may not be the miracle drug some anticipated for breast cancer (it is for other types of cancer) from the success of the early trials, the overwhelming majority of breast cancer specialists believe the drug can be effective and useful in certain patients….

….Dr. Richard Pazdur is the FDA’s Cancer Czar.   Pazdur decides which anti-cancer drugs patients can have access to.  In the case of Avastin, Pazdur changed the criteria to a new very subjective and slippery standard of “clinically meaningful.” And apparently the FDA and Pazdur don’t believe that extending the life of a Breast Cancer victim by 3 to 5 months or more is “Clinically Meaningful.”

How do you put a price tag on those precious months for the families who are living through the hell of losing a Mother, Sister, Daughter, Aunt or Wife?  Taking Avastin off label is nothing more then government rationing of healthcare. Period….

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