Toolbox
Rating: n/a
Bookmark
Save as PDF
Print
Email
Blog It
Digg It
del.icio.us
Slashdot It!
Stumble It!
Weighing Costs in Choosing Cancer Care
Helen Geiger of Whiting sits in her kitchen. Whiting, N.J., Saturday, March 22, 2008. Is it worth $20,000 to extend a cancer patient's life by, say, a month or two? It's an awful question often side-stepped in doctors' offices. Later this year, oncologists are to get guidelines that for the first time will encourage straight talk with their patients about chemotherapy costs -- not just for last-ditch cases or the uninsured, but for everyone. The goal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology's planned advice isn't to sway treatment choices one way or another, but to get doctors to broach the topic and thus help patients better weigh their options. (AP Photo/David Gard)
Content from The Associated Press expires 15 days after original publication date. For more information about The Associated Press, please visit www.ap.org .
» Next Article in Medicine & Health - Cancer: Cancer treatments in phase 3 trials successful up to half of the time
Physorg Account
PhysOrg Forum
Video
Editorials
Free Magazines
Free White Papers
Newsletter
Advanced Search
Goto Archive
Suggest a story idea
Send feedback
I never heard that ASCO has been knighted a regulatory agency. Some experts warn that new guidelines could raise costs even further, thus limiting access to cancer patients.
When there are still financial incentives for infusion therapy over oral therapy or non-chemotherapy, and financial incentives for choosing some drugs over others, oncologists will continue to choose drugs which are profitable.
The profit incentive needs to be removed from the choice of cancer treatments. Patients should receive what is best for them, not what is best for their oncologists.
ASCO has a history of going to the mat for its membership, while disguising its positions of self-interest as patient care issues. I don't know why ASCO has signed on to this pseudo-ethical excuse for protecting the profits of its membership.
The anemia drug controversy is a very good case in point. ASCO fought hard for their trade members over new Medicare limits on payments for anemia drugs. Medicare challenged groups like ASCO to come forward with evidence for their arguments. They didn't.
Healthcare network providers had abused giving the drugs so much that they couldn't convince Medicare (or the FDA) otherwise. ASCO was in a snit over it.
Perhaps many practices develop evidence-based guidelines for their own individual practices or modify guidelines based on evidence which they use as their defined evidence-based standards for their practices. The self-educated oncologist doesn't "submit" to the status -quo. They can think for themselves.
What was forgotten was the real issue, that a number of physicians had been going overboard in prescribing pharmaceutical EPO. They can very easily be inappropriately influenced by pharmaceutical companies when prescribing drugs, and they sure can become mighty righteous when there's a threat to their pockets.
The ultimate tragedy is that the course of oncology therapy has been driven not by compassion or true concern for the patient, but rather by the perpetuation of a research culture that cannot conquer a disease, or for that matter, ever embark on that process for fear of putting themselves out of work.
Bert Berkson said it best: "Nothing will keep a man from understanding a new idea quite like his income depending on his not understanding it."
It's only when ASCO has appointed itself as the judge/jury/prosecutor/defense rolled into one and not invite input from all relevant parties that their decisions have become suspect.
In short, a patient and their family must be their own best advocate and get to the heart of the matter as to why a specific treatment regimen is being suggested, not by ASCO guidelines.