Dying From Universal Health Insurance
The Health Care Policy Was A Success But The Patient Died
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in Government-run health care | Policy — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
One such case was Debbie Hirst's. Her breast cancer had metastasized, and the health service would not provide her with Avastin, a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay. So, with her oncologist's support, she decided last year to try to pay the roughly £60,000, or $116,000, cost herself, while continuing with the rest of her publicly financed treatment.
By December, she had raised £10,000 and was preparing to sell her house to raise more. But then the government, which had tacitly allowed such arrangements before, put its foot down. Hirst heard the news from her doctor.
"He looked at me and said, 'I'm so sorry, Debbie. I've had my wrists slapped from the people upstairs, and I can no longer offer you that service,' " Hirst said.
"I said, 'Where does that leave me?' He said, 'If you pay for Avastin, you'll have to pay for everything' " - in other words, for all her cancer treatment, far more than she could afford.
Officials said that allowing Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.
Patients "cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated on the NHS and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs," Health Secretary Alan Johnson told Parliament. "That way lies the end of the founding principles of the NHS."
But Hirst, who is 57 and was first diagnosed with cancer in 1999, went to the news media, and so did other patients in similar situations. And it became clear that theirs were not isolated cases.
In fact, it is widely acknowledged by patients, doctors and officials across the health care system that patients suffering from every imaginable complaint regularly pay for some parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free.
Read On...
[I]n a final irony, Hirst was told early this month that her cancer had spread and her condition had deteriorated so much that she could have the Avastin after all - paid for by the health service. In other words, a system that forbade her to buy the medicine earlier was now saying that she was so sick she could have it at public expense.
Hirst is pleased, but only to a point. Avastin is not a cure, but a way to extend her life, perhaps only by several months, and she has missed valuable time. "It may be too bloody late," she said.
The endpoint here is the same as it always is with socialist systems: it's financially unsustainable to equalize everyone by providing the best care universally - so instead, the government makes us all equal by giving everyone the worst. This, in the end, is the portrait of what America's health care system would look like under Obama or Hillary: a middle-aged woman dying unnecessarily of breast cancer so we can all feel equal. Hey, it works in Europe!
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Dying From Universal Health Insurance 5 Comments (0 topical, 5 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I find this deplorable.
My mother had health insurance and got good care. She was an active duty Guardsman and she had her insurance through one of the PPOs offered by the ANG. When she got so sick that it was evident she might have to leave the Guard (she never did-sadly she died before then), she voiced concern to her doctor that she wouldn't have insurance. Her doctor told her not to worry, that she would see to it that my mom got what she needed. and to this day, I believe she would have continued to treat my mom and get her the drugs someway, somehow.
When my mother-in-law was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme 10 months into her medi-care coverage, they recommended that she have thalidamide as part of a chemo regimen. During that time thalidimide used for brain tumors was an off label usage. Medicare declined, so her doctor found a way to get her the drugs through IV by submitting my mother-in-law's case to a foundation set up for just such things.
In both cases, our mothers received excellent care, save my mom's primary care doctor that didn't catch the recurrence quick enough-dumb b*st*rd.
Make no mistake, neither of these women were wealthy. My mom had to pay for health insurance every month and my mother-in-law was using the system she and her husband had paid into all those years. My mom was making about $35K a year and my inlaws were living off of about $2400 a month from Social Security and a $1500 a month annuity payment. My family would have no way in h*ll let some governmental agency tell us that either of them could not have had a drug they needed. We would have moved heaven and earth to get them what they needed, and we could have given our current health care system.
Purely anecdotal-We know lots of NATO folks now. The Brits are retiring from the RAF and then moving to Spain. Why? Two big reasons. Sick of paying for all the entitlements the British gov't has set up for immigrants, and tired of waiting for health care.
Do we, as a nation, really want to go down this road? I know I sure as h*ll don't.
See, now you have me fired up.
True story-
My daughter has a classmate that is watching his mother fight like crazy for her life while non-small cell lung cancer is doing its darnedest to kill her. She has exhausted all conventional approved treaments. They have given her 4 more years since diagnosis, but her sons are still only 11 and 5. She wants more time. So, she has entered into a Phase II clinical trial in the hopes that a cutting edge vaccine will buy her some time, or even cure her, or provide data that may help keep another father or mother with their children. It costs about $16K a month and her insurance does not cover it or her expenses to travel monthly from Seattle to Dallas. Her family and friends have put together fund raisers, benefits, etc...to give her this last hope. Should the gov't be able to deny her that? I think not. BTW-one of those drugs she used over the course of her treatment was Avastin. It was off label at the time, but I have no doubt she would have died without it. It bought her time for this vaccine trial to come online for her. And again, these are not rich people. She is a stay at home mom and her husband a MS math/science teacher. Average, ordinary Americans faced with daunting obstacles, but moving forward without the interference of some stupid gov't health care program.
for all but the first 6 years of my life, let me assure you all I have seen first hand how socialized medicine works. Those of us in the military live it everyday. It isn't always pretty. Fortunately, we still have the CHOICE to seek other care outside the system. And many of us do regularly. Woe be it to the person that tries to take that choice away from me.
Well, not really. One suspects the true Michael Moore response would be to twist the Avastin story around somehow, to make it look like the woman's fault.
But broadly speaking, the Moore perspective, which is shared by most Americans who support socialized medicine, is that there is no inherent conflict between high quality and equal outcomes.
In other words, they don't accept that there is a tradeoff. This is America, after all. If we can put a man on the moon, we can give everyone equal healthcare and still have it be the best in the world. Right? Especially given that Cuba has done it (another left-wing article of faith).
This is the misperception we have to fight against. The British, to their credit, at least have clearly stated that the goal isn't necessarily to maximize the quality of healthcare outcomes, but rather to make everyone equal. The same applies in Canada.
The healthcare battle in America will be different because there's no broad understanding that the choice really is that stark.
who says that government run health care is a good idea.
Fighting for conservatism one day at a time.