Death Panels?

My sister would have become eligible for Medicare three and a half months from now. She didn't make it.

I don't blame anyone in particular for her early death. She had health insurance. She received excellent care. But she might have lived a longer and still productive life except for two failures of our health care system. Both were caused by our reliance on market mechanisms to provide solutions to health problems.

There are seemingly endless choices of pharmaceutical products for chemotherapy. Sharon's oncologist, based on extensive diagnostic tests, chose one particular treatment. It worked well. Her cancer seemed under control.

As time passed, the manufacturer and medical practitioners learned that, though the drug was effective for my sister, it wasn't effective for many others. The manufacturer withdrew it from the market.

My sister's condition worsened.

The oncologist searched the pharmacopeia and found another treatment that he thought might be effective, though not as effective as his (no longer available) first choice.

As he expected, the second choice was not quite as effective, but seemed to be working.

Then a few weeks ago when another round of chemotherapy was scheduled, the hospital informed my sister that they were unable to find any of the necessary medication. A few days later, on August 19th, I read in the New York Times that government officials, the drug industry and doctor's groups were "rushing to find remedies for critical shortages of drugs to treat a number of life-threatening illnesses, including bacterial infection and several forms of cancer."

By mid August of this year, 189 drugs crucial to treatment of childhood leukemia, breast cancer, colon cancer and certain infections were in short supply. The drug for treating my sister's cancer was among them.

Weakened from lack of treatment and related complications, my sister passed away September 2d.

There were many factors affecting her death, some out of our control. But the final straw was the failure of the drug market reliably to supply life saving medications. Does the drug industry have death panels?

In any case, when the drug companies withdrew one medically necessary, safe and effective drug from the market and drastically reduced the availability of another, not for medical reasons but for marketing reasons, they had no regard for my sister's life.

"Do not ask for whom the bell tolls -
It tolls for thee."

-John Donne