Cancer Treatment and Health Care Reform
The most talked about issue in the country now is health care reform. After President Obama’s news conference this week, the subject is even hotter. I try to avoid politics in this blog, but I must say that the more the president pushes his plan, the less credible he becomes in the minds of the public. The reason is that the promise of more options, better coverage, and less cost is unsubstantiated by specifics, and the people aren’t buying it. Even many in his own party are skeptical. Meanwhile, the Congressional budget office’s analysis of the plan includes the “T” word (trillion) in its cost reports. The cold, hard facts are that you can’t get there from where we are in conventional medicine. The costs of developing, producing, and applying the exotic drugs and high-tech equipment are exorbitant.
This administration’s assumption is that the health care system is broken. I don’t believe it’s broken. America has, without question, the best health care system in the world. It just costs too much. Since cancer treatment in general is more expensive than treatment of any other disease, it is certainly a big part of the problem. It is driving insurance premiums out of reach of many employers and individual policy holders. Cancer victims who are not insured often end up declaring bankruptcy. There is an answer to this that you will probably never hear about, because it is hardly ever talked about. And, it doesn’t require tax increases to implement the reform. It is a change in strategy to integrative oncology as the mainstream practice in cancer treatment.
Integrative oncology, as currently practiced in the U.S. by a relatively small number of oncologists, can reduce the level and duration of chemotherapy and radiation. Although it adds complementary therapies to the conventional protocol, the costs of these therapies are minuscule compared to the cost of portions of conventional therapy it can replace. As the efficacy of the complementary therapies are proven on a larger scale, the ratio of complementary to conventional therapy will become higher, thus saving even more. This new strategy should at most drive a paradigm shift in cancer treatment and at least be a significant part of health care reform.
Two things would have to happen for integrative oncology to be a major piece of health care reform. First, the administration would have to promote it as such. Secondly, insurance companies would have to be required by law to cover integrative therapies. Presently, few integrative medicine therapies are covered by insurance. If these two prerequisites were accomplished, the cost of cancer treatment would be tremendously reduced. More importantly, cancer victims would live longer and have greater quality of life during treatment.
Keep this in mind as you listen to the debate. Don’t miss a chance to speak up for and support integrative cancer treatment.