Dangerous ‘experiment’

More than 300 cancer clinics in America have closed in the last decade as Medicare shrank payments to the point at which clinics could not cover overhead. Now, there is a plan by Medicare part B to carry out an experiment — to push doctors to prescribe cheaper treatments for cancer. If this “experiment” turns into a policy for Medicare, insurers will almost certainly adopt it for patients in general.

We are just now beginning to understand how different cancer instances in different people require specialized treatments. For instance, breast cancers (as are all cancers) are made up of their own genomes (i.e., sets of genes). Specific genomes can now be analyzed and tested to determine to which drugs they will be most vulnerable. If the genome of breast cancer A can be treated successfully with drug A, but is treated with drug B because it is cheaper, there may no effect on the cancer.

Multiply this by the thousands of people diagnosed with cancers each year, and the outcome is needless suffering and death, not to mention prolonged terminal life treatments that themselves can rack up hefty bills.