Cancer Care Is getting out of reach

Implications: The cost of medical care is increasing at an alarming rate The amount of money to support a physician's practice is going down at the same alarming rate especially in oncology

Analysis: As with anything in society, advancing technology cost more money until the patent is lost. The same applies to drugs. Whether we like it or not, while "the mother of invention is necessity; the father is profit". I can think of few medical or scientific improvements gained within a restricted, controlled society. I do feel the problem is especially true in oncology because so many of the improvements in therapy are relatively new in the area of targeted cancer therapy. It will be a long time before there are generic replacements. The big pharma companies need to get as much out of them up front in order to please the investors or no more drugs. Also, we live in a society that demands perfection. No mistakes are allowable in drug development and therefore a very expensive and time consuming process of drug testing is standard for FDA approval. The lawyers are also waiting in the wings to get as much out of a drug through personal injury claims against the manufacturer before it goes generic. Just looks at the commercilas on TV and you notice they only involve the name brands before they go generic. Basically we have established a system that will insist on excessive costs in producing drugs and if the government thinks it could take over the process, I fear for everyone's health. In regrds to oncology, tjhe only cost savings that has been seen over tha past few years has been in third party payments to oncology practices that are responsible for treating 80% of the cancer patients in the US. If people want improvements in any problem affecting society, they need to be willing to fight and pay for it . As cancer becomes the biggest killer of Americans, I would hope we are willing to trn back the recent trends of reducing payments to oncology treatment facilities by writng their representatives that control medicare reimbursements for cancer patients.