"Best Health Care in the World, Baby!"

[n2doc]

So long as you are rich....

Cancer costs put treatments out of reach for many

Debra Sherman
Reuters
1:15 p.m. CDT, June 6, 2011


CHICAGO (Reuters) - The skyrocketing cost of new cancer treatments is putting advances in fighting the deadly disease out of reach for a growing number of Americans.

Cancer patients are abandoning medical care because the costs are simply too high and medical bills -- even among the insured -- are unmanageable and risk bankruptcy, studies show.

"There's a growing awareness that the cost of cancer treatment is unsustainable," said Dr. Lee Schwartzberg, an oncologist who did a study examining the factors that contributed to patients quitting their oral cancer drugs.

Cancer is one of the most costly diseases to treat, largely because many patients are treated over a long term, often with expensive new drugs that are complicated to produce and not available in generic form. And as insurance companies cut all benefits, reimbursements on cancer treatments have also declined.

more

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sns-rt-us-cancer-economicstre7551yf-20110606,0,4828987.story

[obxhead]

1. It's time to nationalize health care.

All of it, including pharma.

[nichomachus]

2. Health-care should not be a for-profit business

A healthy populace is a matter of national security.

[truedelphi]

3. K & R. n/t

[marmar]

4. Sad, sad state of affairs.

nt

[truedelphi]

5. Even as cutting edge cancer treatments are prohibitively expensive,

Alternatives and life style changes that will prevent cancer are frowned on by today's medical establishment.






Journal of Advancement in Medicine

Volume 2, Numbers 1/2, Spring/Summer 1989

Ninety Percent Reduction in Cancer Mortality after Chelation Therapy With EDTA

Walter Blumer, M.D. and Elmer Cranton, M.D.



ABSTRACT: Mortality from cancer was reduced 90% during an 18-year follow-up of 59 patients treated with Calcium-EDTA. Only one of 59 treated patients (1.7%) died of cancer while 30 of 172 non treated control subjects (17.6%) died of cancer (P=0.002). Death from artherosclerosis was also reduced. Treated patients had no evidence of cancer at the time of entry into this study. Observations relate only to long-term prevention of death from malignant disease, if chelation therapy is begun before clinical evidence of cancer occurs. Control and treated patients lived in the same neighborhood, adjacent to a heavyily traveled highway in a small Swiss city. Both groups were exposed to the same amount of lead from automobile exhaust, industrial pollution and other carcinogens. Exposure to carcinogens was no greater for the studied population than exists in most other metropolitan areas throughout the world. Statistical analysis showed EDTA chelation therapy to be the only significant difference between controls and treated patients to explain the marked reduction in cancer mortality.

EDTA is well recognized as a therapy for lead toxicity. EDTA also removes other toxic heavy metals and nutritional elements such as iron which promote cancer by catalyzing free radical pathology.

Lead from automobile exhausts, petrochemicals form wear of automobile tires, cadmium, and other carcinogens are present in higher concentrations adjacent to heavily traveled automobile highways. These substances cause cancer and potentate other carcinogens.