Blog: Chemotherapy - Sequester Victim

The outrage continues...

Cancer clinics across the country are turning away Medicare patients because of the sequester.  How incompetent can our House, Senate and President be to allow this to happen?  Our elected representatives should have made exclusions for anything that would endanger the lives of our sick people.  The sequester was the last resort of a lazy government who didn't care enough for its citizens to give up the time and effort to sit down and tackle the problems of our country and show leadership.  Instead they bolted their offices to fly off on spring break.

Medications for seniors are normally included in Medicare Part D or by private insurance, but because chemotherapy drugs must be administered by a physician they are covered under Part B.  The federal government normally pays community oncologists the average price of the drug plus another 6% to store and administer them.  The doctors cannot change the cost of the drug, so the 2% must be taken out of the 6% overhead.  Cancer-stricken patients who can afford a large out-of-pocket expense can try to seek help at larger hospitals.  Most seniors who average a social security benefit of $1,500 a month cannot afford the extra $650 to $1,000 out-of-pocket expense.

It's been said that you can judge a society by how it treats its elders.  What a sad commentary that this tragic turn of events is showing our true colors.  Anything as severe as this should have been excluded from the sequester cuts.  I recently lost a daughter to cancer.  Having to remind the people who run our Constitutional Republic about how to do their job is outrageous.  And an insult to the American people.  Stop the petty back-stabbing and vicious partisanship, sit down and start doing the job you were elected to do.  If you can't or don't want to do the job, please resign so that others who consider it an honor to serve can do so.