For more than six months, breast cancer patients have been stuck in a horrible limbo, being forced to wait and watch the rationing battle over Avastin play out in a debate between government bureaucrats with little concern for their well being at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). There has been an ongoing battle between victims rights groups, families of cancer victims and the FDA specific to the drug, and other life saving drugs.  The stakes could not be higher when you are talking about a debate over a drug that has proven to extend the life of cancer patients.  Expect this debate to expand to other drugs and services if ObamaCare is allowed to continue to exist.

Conservatives are against big government and the federal goverment spending your tax dollars on health care.  It is wrong for the government to spend so much money on drugs and health care services that cause massive inflation for drugs and care for those paying with after tax dollars.  Just try to fill a prescription without health care insurance and you will feel the sting of health care inflation.  Things would be much better if the federal government just got out of the business of spending your tax dollars on health care services and drugs.

That being said, cancer patients should be left harmless from our dysfunctional health care system.  Yes, these life saving drugs carry a high cost, yet they are extending life.  These cancer patients did not set up our government heavy health care regime and they should not pay the price for a government run health care system experiencing massive inflation.

The FDA is forging forward to de-label the drug Avastin, which means that unless they change their mind in the appeals process, Medicare will soon refuse to pay for the cost of it.  Furthermore, since private health insurance takes their cues from the government most private health insurance plans are likely to stop covering this drug as well.  The drug has proven to work and the FDA is basically saying that costs is a factor in approving the life extending drug.

This is a preview to the world we shall live in under ObamaCare.  If the law is not stricken from the law by the U.S. Supreme Court, expect this fact pattern to repeat over and over again.  If the FDA stands by this move the drug will still be available to those who can afford it, but for those who can’t it’s a different, potentially tragic, story. 

The Brits have the National Health Services program that openly rations care.  The designers of Obamacare worship at the altar of the British health care system.  One of those worshippers, President Obama’s head of Medicare and Medicaid services Donald Berwick has said the following:

The decision is not whether or not we will ration care–the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.

Take the case of Christie Turnage.  She is a breast cancer survivor who is fighting a government rationing decision by the FDA.  Expect more Christie Turnages if ObamaCare moves forward, because the government will ration care and drugs.  The fight over full repeal of ObamaCare is a very important issue for those who are worried that the Avastin matter will be repeated on a mass level for every American seeking expensive care and products.