4 Strategies to Reduce the Cost of Cancer Care

There is a major red flag here - the odds of getting cancer (33% for women, 50% for men) shows you how much our current medical system has completely failed and failed miserably. It would be interesting to compare that statistic to 50 years ago. The only approaches that our currently ineffectual system provides, once a person has cancer, is slash (surgery), poison (chemo) and burn (radiation), terms that the medicos themselves use which just goes to highlight their own opinions of their own treatment modalities.

There are a number of areas that need serious correction:

1) FDA - this is an organization that is ill-equipped and dysfunctional. It permits drugs on the market that are known to be dangerous. Here it is 50 years later and they are just now voting to take the pain killer Darvon off the market. I'm sure the physiological effects of Darvon are the same today as they day it was introduced, yet it takes 50 years?

2) Unethical politicians and lobbyists that encourage monopolies of high priced drugs

3) Pharmaceutical industry which runs both parties in Washington having over one full time lobbyist per congressman

4) Concerted efforts to impugn the proven effects of nutrition and vitamins in prevention of cancer. Yet research on vitamin D, some of it decades old, has proven successful in preventing 50-70% of ALL cancers.

5) Medical journals are increasingly influenced by Big Pharma and it is reflected in the articles which are published.

It's about money and vested interests. Follow the trail of money and you will get answers. Cancer treatment is largely unsuccessful and expensive (and profitable). If it was cheap and successful, we would have the cancer industry we have today.

Sure people do survive conventional treatments but few believe the treatments cure - the patient is simply "in remission." Which is completely true because the cause of an individual's cancer is not ascertained. The idea is simply get rid of the mass by surgery, chemo or radiation and hope for the best.

Even screening, which some may consider preventative, is not prevention. It's about catching a cancer early. Yet some of the techniques used are not without risk. Mammography radiates an area that has very tender tissue and can cause tumor that would not ordinarily grow. And another preventative measure is to remove an unaffected breast because of a genetic market (e.g., Christina Applegate).

The only slashing, poisoning and burning that needs to be done is on the system itself.

Mike S of CA 4:09PM February 06, 2009