Testimony of a Cancer Survivor
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 07:46AM 
I am a ten-year survivor of two kinds of cancer. I am alive because I had health insurance which permitted me to obtain excellent medical care. But if the Clinton "universal," government-mandated health care plan had been enacted in the 1990s, the odds are great that I would now be dead. If the Obama health care plan is enacted, no matter how prettied-up and carefully-worded it may be, then the nation will pay dearly and people like me will die prematurely.
Because I have spent so much time in clinics and waiting rooms and medical facilities, I know that Canadians who can afford to are coming to the United States for medical care, especially for cancer. Many Canadian medical facilities are outmoded; tests are often delayed; treatments are often denied. With cancer, delay can mean the difference between arresting a colony of mutagenic cells in time or having to deal with incurable metastasized cancer. Time is of the essence; so the affluent and the wealthy come here, where health care is not rationed.
The chemotherapy drugs which saved my life in 2007 were not available in Canada. The death rate from colorectal cancer in Canada is 25 per cent higher than in the United States. The reason for the discrepancy is that Canada has "universal," government-run health care, and the United States does not.
Is our health care system "broken?" Hardly. We have the best medical centers, the best equipment, and the best diagnostic testing that money can buy. Top-notch doctors come here from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Philippines, and other countries. The United States is the world leader in medical innovation:
"Ultimately, lost or constrained innovation impacts public health. Access to new drugs, for instance, is far superior for American consumers than European ones. For cancer patients, access to new drugs is crucial: a report by the Swedish Karolinska Institute, published in the Annals of Oncology, found that "The United States has been the country of first launch for close to half of the oncology drugs brought to the market in the past 11 years." The authors of the report observe that "Nearly half of the observed improvement in the 2–year cancer survival rate between 1992 and 2000 at 50 US cancer centers could be attributed to the use of new cancer drugs," evidence that America's embrace of new medicines translates into saved human lives.
"The evidence is unmistakable: Europe's pharmaceutical industry is in the midst of a long and steady decline, and Europe's bio–tech industry is lagging significantly behind its American counterpart. What is also clear—but far more controversial—is that by adopting certain aspects of the American R&D system, Europeans could regain their innovative and competitive edge."
Science Pioneer Cautions Europe on Declining Medical Innovation
"But one argument against universal health insurance isn't so easy to dismiss: the argument about innovation and the cutting edge of medical care. . . . In a universal coverage system, the government would seek to limit spending by forcing down payments to doctors and pharmaceutical companies, while scrutinizing treatments for cost-effectiveness. This, in turn, would lead to both less innovation and less access to the innovation that already exists. And the public would end up losing out, because, as Tyler Cowen wrote last year in The New York Times, 'the American health care system, high expenditures and all, is driving innovation for the entire world.'"
The New Republic, Creative Destruction.
Is our health care system "unfair?" Of course it is. "Life is unfair" - - President John F. Kennedy. But the Canadian health care system is also unfair -- more so, because it denies health care to some of those persons who pay the taxes to subsidize the system. Is it selfish to say that those with more money should be able to buy better health care? Of course it is -- but self-interest is the best measure of value in a free society and because of the money paid and contributed by so many of us self-interested types, American health care is better for everyone.
Do I wish that every child in America had access to quality health care? Of course I do. But not at the cost of damaging or destroying the system we have now. Most children have health insurance of some kind now. Our health care system has an exemplary record of treating children who have cancer. In the year I was born, childhood cancer was fatal within five years in more than 95 per cent of the cases; the survival rate now exceeds 75 percent!
"Childhood cancers showed some of the largest improvements in cancer survival during the past 20 years, with an absolute survival rate increase of 20 percent in boys and 13 percent in girls. The current five-year survival rate of over 75 percent confirms substantial progress made since the early 1960s, when childhood cancers were nearly always fatal." National Cancer Institute, "Annual Report to the Nation Finds Cancer Incidence and Death Rates on the Decline: Survival Rates Show Significant Improvement."
"Universal," government-run health care will inevitably condemn some of those children to early death.
"Universal," government-run health care will inevitably condemn many adults like me to early death.
In both cases, the question is not "whether," but "who."
It is likely that cancer will eventually kill me. Because cancer treatment is physically punishing and has long-lasting side effects, both physical and emotional, the day may come when I decide that I have had enough. But that should be my choice; I should not be left to die because medical care is rationed. I am not a "victim" of cancer; I am a cancer survivor who doesn't want to become a victim of bureaucracy.
This is my testimony. Thank you for reading.
Obama, cancer, healthcare, medicine in politics 
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Reader Comments (8)
Odds, schmods. You have no proof you wouldn't have received excellent care under the Clinton plan. What there is proof of is that there are millions of people not as lucky as you are who do not have health insurance who most assuredly do die. What do you mostly sound like? Another sad, bitter LOSER.
You're an idiot. The proof is staring you in the face, in Cananda. "Sad, bitter LOSER"? Based on what? Double idiot. You're here at my Web site; point me to the "sad, bitter" articles or pictures. Triple idiot. "What there is proof of is that there are millions of people not as lucky as you are who do not have health insurance who most assuredly do die." Show me. Millions dying from lack of treatment? Such a thing is not happening in the United States. Your viewpoint is based entirely on politics, and not at all on facts or reasoning. Finally, the word "lucky" doesn't apply for two reasons. One, people who work for a living and buy health insurance aren't "lucky." No "luck" involved. Two, if you consider having cancer to be "lucky" - - well, best of luck to ya!
This notion that people are not being treated in America because they have no health insurance is just wrong on so many levels.
First of all, it is illegal for any hospital not to treat someone in an emergency. Second, we have three major health systems in my town. Out of the three, it is the policy of two, one a catholic system and one a state-funded university, that they cannot deny treatment due to lack of funds or insurance. In fact, the third provider transfers all its "non-paying" emergency patients to one of the other two after they are no longer in life-threatening situations.
The interesting thing about the Canadian system is that while most Canadians profess to liking it, the reality is that most also know that there may come a time in their lives when they have to cross the border to get adequate care.
What you have in Canada is a bureacratic nightmare. Because everything is paid by the government, you can't even get simple cancer tests done properly without jumping through hoops.
I think the sad, bitter loser is mittens. While it is true that the author has no proof, Jay does make a logical inference from the anecdotal data he has gathered. Mittens: It's called THINKING. I know, that's not required to follow Obama...
Oh, MIttens: Speaking of proof, please provide some for your completely unsubstantiated statement about millions dying due to lack of health care. I guess I missed that one in the news.
We already know, don't we, that the initial planning for the Obama health care plan, funding for which was included in the "stimulus" package, was for the development of a framework that will put an unelected, Presidentially-selected committee whose job it will be to cut out the unnecessary spending on medical care. That committee will has, as a part of its portfolio, pressuring doctors to avoid "unnecessary" tests, and making determinations as to whether a particular treatment makes economic sense for a particular class of people.
It is not a matter of the value of an individual, not a matter of the inherent dignity of every person, not a matter of the individual's willingness to pay whatever it costs to get the treatment desired, it is a matter of whether that person falls into a classification of people who are deemed to be out of the sweet spot for a particular kind of treatment.
In my house, we already know that if - or rather, WHEN, now - the single payer system fully kicks in, my wife will be on a short leash before she is denied the $300 per month medication that is currently keeping her alive and pain free. She will be written off by the bean counters in charge of squeezing out the excess "waste" and consigned to a gradual, increasingly painful decline and death.
That is the human price that will be paid by hundreds of thousands of Americans because brain-numb Obamaniacs think they are helping people by forcing them into a universal, single-payer, no-competition, one-size-fits-all medical straightjacket.
It's a case of utopian, unrealizable idealism strangling pragmatic, real-world, imperfect-but-realizable solutions to problems that aren't really that hard to solve.
Happily for Obama, those with "pull" will never do without - not without health care, energy, food, airplane travel, nice sweaters, or expensive vacation retreat centers. Unhappily for Mitten, "little" people like her are going to pay the price - and get a very rude shock in the process. But it will be too late.
And there's a darn good chance my wife will not be alive to see Mitten's contrition. Or in too much pain to give a damn.
Actually, I do have proof. The chemotherapy regimen I received in 2007 was not approved and thus was not available in Canada. I could not have afforded it out of pocket. If the United States had instituted the Clinton health care system in the 1990s, I would not have gotten that treatment. Actual denial of treatment to Canadians is actual evidence of what happens in a government-run system.
TBascom: I pray that your wife continues to live as pain-free as possible and is able to enjoy life while she remains with us.
Government-run health care sooner or later reaches the point of discounting the value of human life. We have already gone a long way down that road by tolerating discretionary late-term abortions; the next step is to discount the value of the elderly and infirm, no matter how productive they were at one time. The logical end point is to let the elderly and infirm die - - or provide them with a euthanasia "program" to hasten their exit - - because that is the most cost-effective way to spend the money. Simple cost-benefit analysis. Instead of "E Pluribus Unum," our motto could be "Shoot The Stragglers."
Jay, thanks for the piece. I agree: Under Hillarycare--and my guess, under Obamacare, should America be so damned to have that--you'd have been history by now.
Terry, sorry to hear about your wife. You'll both be in my prayers.
Mittens, please, get a life and something else to say other than your knee-jerk, emotional and oh-so-predictable liberal/leftist response.
By the way, calliing Jay a loser? You haven't earned the right to call him that.