correction: I made a factual error, probably for shock effect. An entire month of these pills costs $16,000 ~ NOT a single pill, as stated below. Divide $16K by 12 to get the true per-pill cost. Which is one-third less expensive in Canada, BTW.
Postscript:
Following a large-scale online petition effort signed by more than a thousand concerned colleagues and friends, AstraZeneca, the drug's manufacturer, awarded John Haydon a year's supply free. Those pills would have otherwise cost $192,000 retail in the US, about a third more than in Canada.
If, in the 21st Century, a nation can't offer good-to-great health care to all its citizens, ability to "pay" aside, it's a failed state.
Health care is a basic human right. There, I said it. Defy that belief. Disagree. Or agree ... and join the most important movement in a hundred years.
As far as its citizens' health is concerned, the US NOW is a failed state. For the war-machine-makers, it's a great state! For the financial "wizards" who thrive on loopholes, it's a great state! For Big Pharma charging $16K a pill, it's a great state!
YET for all its fly-overs and tanks in the Lincoln Memorial (an image that makes me puke patriotic colors), my country right now 'tis of them, not of thee.
America is rich enough times 10 to have the world's best, accessible-to-all health care.
Yet US health outcomes are mediocre, judged globally (most expensive, YES!; best? nowhere close) and incredible contributors and humans and parents like John Haydon have to exhaust themselves DAILY > as they fight cancer < to nudge a balkanized, inefficient, profit-driven, jury-rigged, poorly monitored, jes grew system to work well enough so JOHN DOESN'T DIE.
I'm ashamed. I'm incensed. What can I do? WE do?
Let's prove something, if we're really all that good at what we do.
Let's END the debate. Let's get this DONE. Full access for every US resident to good-to-great healthcare. NOT because we're a kind nation; because we're a smart, forward-looking nation.
WHO?
The insurance company is the popular villain in these tales. But they're just doing what insurance companies do to protect their (outrageous) profit margins: they automatically deny everything they can.
The hero is John Haydon and his calm, determined, "every day I get up and fight for my life" attitude. He's a good patient: which, doctors will tell you, is actually kind of rare. He's eating well, doing what he's told, working out, staying positive. And he's got this one chance: this drug that has promise but hasn't been approved for his type of cancer.
CAN it be approved? Well, that's an interesting question. Since so few people ever develop this kind of cancer, running any kind of valid trial might in fact be simply impossible.
SO, what's the alternative? Maybe a different kind of approval. A one-off approval that makes scientific sense.