Spending $93,000 to extend life four months

March 31, 2011

Medicare has just approved reimbursement of $93,000 for a course of treatment

with Provenge which has been shown to extend the lives of HT resistant PCa

patients by an average of four months.

Now if I was one of those patients, I would want the drug if it were provided

free by Medicare. But as an American who pays for that treatment with taxes and

insurance premiums I don't think it is worth it. This treatment wouldn't meet

the criterion of Great Britain's NHS and I suspect that it doesn't qualify in

other Eurpean countries (anyone know?), so why pay for it in America?

And twisting my decision another way, if I had HT resistant PCa and given my

current financial resources, I wouldn't pay for it out of my own pocket, which I

could. I would want my wife and kids to get that money, not waste it on an extra

four months of my life. Tough call but that is how I feel now (but with PCa a

distant memory).

We are going to have to make some tough choices to reign in our country's health

care cost and this is one of them. The medical industry can and will develop

more expensive treatments than we as a society can afford to pay for.

What do you guys think?

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