Stephan: Remember the story I ran a few days ago about the Cuban cancer drug they give away it is so cheap, which now may become available in the U.S.? I speculated on what it might cost, and exaggerated for effect. In truth though I underestimated.
Anyone who has ever filled a prescription outside of the U.S. knows that pharmaceuticals in the U.S. cost many times what they cost elsewhere in the world. It is just one of the ways the Illness Profit System strips unreasonable amounts of money out of the pockets of sick people. But I doubt any of us, who have not actually dealt with these drug costs really comprehends
Now a leading physician at one of the most prestigious medical centers in the country has had enough. This is what Leonard Saltz of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has to say. It is not a pretty picture and the sums involved are jaw-dropping.
This is why Obamacare while helpful really did little or nothing to address the fundamental issue: Why doesn't America have a universal healthcare system whose principle focus is wellness as a national priority?
Leonard Slatz, MD — Chief, Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Credit: www.mskcc.org
As the one-year cost of cancer drugs edges up to $200,000 per patient, (emphasis added) a top doctor from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center used his speech before a massive gathering of colleagues to call for limits on the cost of cancer therapies.
“These drugs cost too much,” gastrointestinal oncologist Leonard Saltz said in an unusual speech Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.
“We need to first accept that there has to be some upper limit as to what we as a society are going to be willing to spend on a patient, and we have to be willing to engage in that discussion,” Saltz told Bloomberg in an interview from the meeting in Chicago. “It’s a very uncomfortable discussion. We should be willing to have it. Because we’re not having the conversation, only the people selling the drugs are weighing in on what they should cost.”
Who lives or dies depends on how much money you make?????? That is not democratic.
WE NEED SINGLE-PAYER MEDICAID FOR EVERYONE.