Kansas Health

[Jeff Donn, "Hope balanced against cost," The Associated Press, The Kansas City Star, 14 August 2006.]

The Kansas City Star reports that a surge in the cost of treatments of undetermined effectiveness is not significantly affecting demand. What could cause such a situation to arise?

In the last decade, an array of expensive new treatments has given some patients their first real fighting chance against common diseases once routinely called “terminal.”

These treatments include biotechnology drugs for cancer and mechanical implants that help the heart pump blood. Some of these therapies, like the biotech drug Gleevec for leukemia or implanted defibrillators for some heart problems, can work wonders.

The trouble with many treatments, though, is that average patients gain only months of life, studies have found. A lucky few may survive for years.

Faced with a lethal disease, more than a third of Americans now would want “everything possible” done to save their lives, up from just over a fifth in 1990, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

In a system dominated by third-party payment of health care where consumers are shielded from the actual cost of treatment, it should not be surprising that cost factors so little into their decision-making process. Further, companies can develop products knowing that even if too few private paying consumers would take them up on their offer, insurance companies and government agencies are willing buyers. Thus, the fact that patients are even faced with such decisions is evidence that something is awry in the system. Encouraging actual consumers to weigh costs and benefits is the only way to restore sanity to health care.

[Greg Scandlen, "Choice is revolutionizing health care," The Wichita Eagle, 28 September 2004.]