“D” Panels Already Exist
This is Matt Alsante, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bureaucracy made a decision that will deny women a viable option for fighting ovarian cancer…. on the day of the meeting the FDA turned its back on 25 years of regulatory precedent and rejected a new cancer drug that by all known standards had passed muster for approval.
This will fit right in with the direction Obama wants to take us.
That isn’t a death panel……it is just a group of people that the public doesn’t vote for, that sometimes arbitrarily regulates what drugs patients have access to, and therefore cuts of access from some of drugs that might be able to help the patients (not die).
Wait, that might actually be a death panel.
The refusal of the other side to admit that rationing will be a part of their so-called reform plans is amazing.
A recent Wall Street Journal article described the travails of the FDA bureaucrat in charge of approving experimental cancer drugs. Supporters thought he was a no nonsense functionary working very hard at a thankless job. Opponents thought he had blood on his hands for depriving people of their only hope.
This is a classic example of The Nanny State: The FDA is worried that this new cancer drug will increase heart and liver toxicity risks.
Of course, a dying cancer patient is willing to take unusual risks (including increased heart and liver problems) in order to defeat cancer. But the FDA won’t let dying cancer patients take that risk, because it isn’t safe. Meanwhile, cancer takes its toll.