PRESS RELEASE
Obama Administration Has
Death Panels in Action
Aug. 19, 2010 (EIRNS)—The alarm has been sounded by cancer specialists and the medical media, that the Obama Administration is lining up another cancer drug, Provenge—used to treat prostate cancer—for banning from Medicare/Medicaid payment coverage, just as the breast cancer drug Avastin, is in jeopardy. This is the death panel approach to medical decision-making.
"This is exactly the genocide I warned about, dating back to my April 11, 2009 international webcast. This is why Obama gets the moustache. He is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler," Lyndon LaRouche said Aug. 17, speaking of the Federal Drug Administration's Advisory Committee's recent recommendation to revoke prior FDA approval of the breast cancer drug Avastin.
Provenge has been shown in clinical trials, to extend lives by over four months for prostate cancer patients. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) announced in July that they have begun a process, aimed at potentially issuing a negative "NCD"—National Coverage Decision—for the drug. This would be the first time that the CMS has denied an anti-cancer drug approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA); in April, the FDA ruled that Provenge meets its criteria for being safe and effective.
By statute, the CMS is to decide what Medicare covers, based on whether the therapy is reasonable and necessary. But the new CMS director, Dr. Donald Berwick, who Obama put in office in a recess appointment July 7, is a career advocate for cost-cutting and shortening lives, to save the HMOs money. This is the intent behind the new Affordable Care Act.
Obamacare is modelled on the Tony Blair 1999 NICE—National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which in turn, is modelled on Hitler's "lives not worthy of the expense" criterion. NICE has notoriously raised the death rate in Britain by disallowing coverage for cancer drugs. This past March, figures were released for the U.K., showing that 20,000 people died needlessly early, over the past year, because NICE turned down outright, four anti-cancer drugs which could have benefited 16,000 people, and provisionally rejected another six drugs that could have extended the lives of 4,000 persons.
CMS is headed this way. It is holding a public-comment period for 30 days, on how Provenge affects health "outcomes," then the CMS Medicare Coverage and Analysis Group is to issue a final judgment a year from now.
