Doctors vs. Bureaucrats: Are They Listening?

When patients, doctors and cancer treatment centers plead with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to continue to allow late-stage breast cancer patients to use life-extending drug Avastin as part of their treatment, it’s time to stand up and take notice.

This week the National Comprehensive Cancer Network — a group of leading cancer centers — reaffirmed its existing recommendation that the drug be used for women with advanced breast cancer. The group strongly believes that women with breast cancer enjoy a better quality of life while on the drug. But if supporters of ObamaCare have their way, breast cancer patients will be denied insurance coverage for the drug and will be forced to pay out of pocket for its benefits.

BigGovernment.com was the first to alert readers to an ominous proposal working its way through the bowels of the FDA. The proposal would change the objective standard for drug approval to a subjective standard that could take the price of the drug into account.

The new “risk-benefit” ratio but begs the question – benefit to whom — the patient or the government bean counters charged by the president to bend the cost curve?

As the government begins to implement policies to “reduce the cost of health care,” rationing is the sharpest tool policy makers have at their disposal. The new FDA standard opens the door to denial of all sorts of drugs and care because of their costs.

When we first alerted readers about this radical proposal, the reaction from the radical left was sad but predictable. TalkingPointsMemo.com and ThinkProgress jumped to the defense of the government – caring not what doctors and patients wanted. They continued their support for denial of care even after cancer groups like Susan B. Komen raised concerns.

But as opposition to the proposal grows among doctors and patients, we have yet to hear anything new from the supporters of ObamaCare and it’s rationing regime. Breast cancer patients understand the threat of the new standard. So do doctors and most policy makers.