It’s not a big stretch to find any type of false claim made by the rhetoric-driven bloggers over at WND, Breitbart, and the Drudge Report. Cancer drugs being denied to people on Medicare was one headline that I actually felt might be worth checking out. The wording used by World Net Daily I found the most troubling because of the age of their audience…
Code blue! Government says no to wonder drug
What if there was a “cancer pill” … an oral prescription much less toxic to the immune system than traditional chemotherapy … a medication more effective than standard treatments?There is.
But chances are good if you need it, you’ll be denied.
Sounds pretty scary right? Medicare taking a swipe at cancer patients by denying them a miracle pill to cure cancer seems pretty damn scary. But, that is where the facts decided to rear their ugly heads with common sense. There is no “miracle pill”, this spin is a pro-Big Pharma talking point, and this is an attempt to fight a Democrat-sponsored bill which was created to combat price fleecing from greedy pharmaceutical companies.
H.R. 1801, also known as the ‘Cancer Drug Coverage Parity Act of 2013’, is sponsored by Rep. Brian Higgins (D-NY 26th) and it is co-sponsored by 17 Democrats and 2 Republicans. The bill was introduced to hold drug companies accountable for their pricing rather than charging Medicare numbers based on other comparable products on the market. The pill that was touted by the Tea Party as a miracle, is actually an over-priced chemotherapy pill which would replace infusions. The pills aren’t available for all of the various cancer chemotherapy treatments, however the owners of the drug company have been charging Medicare prices which match or exceed the traditional infusions. Does it cost more to make? No. Did it take more research to invent than the infusions? No. Why is it so expensive then? Because money. Lots of extra money that no sane business would impose those margins onto customers, but since they are dealing with a captive audience… they can currently charge whatever they want. (You can thank Bush Jr. for that.)
So the Tea Party has shown where their alliances lie… not with the consumers… not with the elderly or the sick… and definitely not with any human decency. The Tea Party instead aligns their business-first idealism into Medicare to further push towards Medicare Voucher programs and other idiocy which only helps financial institutions, equipment manufacturers, drug companies, and a few politicians. The Tea Party wants to make money off of grandma. Remember those jobs that they said would be created under their idealistic leaders? They are possible… they just depend on pinching the nation’s elderly and disabled to get there.
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