Why Should Politicians and Bureaucrats Decide Whether Breast-Cancer Patients Can Take Avastin?

Posted by Michael F. Cannon

Today’s Washington Post contains an article titled, “FDA Considers Revoking Approval of Avastin for Advanced Breast Cancer.”  An excerpt:

The debate over Avastin, prescribed to about 17,500 women with breast cancer a year, has become entangled in the politically explosive struggle over medical spending and effectiveness that flared during the battle over health-care reform: How should the government balance protecting patients and controlling costs without restricting access to cutting-edge, and often costly, treatments?

A better question is: why should the government be the one to strike that balance?  Why shouldn’t some women be able to sign up for a health plan that covers Avastin, while others are free to make a different choice?

Regulation Cures Cancer

Posted by Jim Harper

That’s the implicit message of an advocacy campaign the American Cancer Society’s “Cancer Action Network” is running in the Washington, D.C. Metro’s Capitol South station.

Large placards showing pictures of people people who are “NOW” healthy but will “LATER” be stricken with cancer give Capitol Hill staffers commuting in to work a clear message: Do something — anything. It’s part of the otherworldly bubble that lobbyists and advocacy groups press around staff and members of Congress.

The message they need — perhaps a little too complex for the subway — is that Congress has Münchausen syndrome by proxy with respect to the health care system.