This week the FDA decided to revoke approval of the cancer drug Avastin for breast cancer patients. Although some breast cancer survivors credit Avastin for saving their lives, they are a minority of patients. And, according to the FDA, statistics don't show that the drug is significantly effective for the "average patient."
But you're not an "average patient." You're not a number or a percentage or a statistical average. You're a unique individual.
Welcome to the danger of government-run health care: When government bodies control access to drugs and treatments, they have no choice but to reduce people to statistical averages. This decision on Avastin is only a prelude to the rationing of health resources that is certain to come from ObamaCare.
We know that doctors want the freedom to treat not the average patient, but the actual patient. We know that American women and their families want the freedom to choose the treatments that are right for them. We know that a one-size-fits-all government solution is no solution at all — it simply results in cutting off options, reducing choice, and imposing one-size-fits-all policies to millions and millions of unique patients.
This why we've been fighting to repeal ObamaCare.
We should never ask government to make life-or-death decisions about how patients should be treated when government can only treat us like numbers. Breast cancer patients aren't numbers; they are individuals. Just like all Americans, they have unique bodies, unique personalities, and unique sets of preferences and values.
Americans are at a crossroads. We can continue down the path that led us to the FDA's Avastin decision, or we can reverse course.
Obamacare will add layers of bureaucracy instead of multitudes of choices. It will reduce competition and narrow our options in health insurance by limiting the policies sold in state-wide exchanges. It will further enable the government to make top-down, cost-benefit analyses that by definition must ignore our personal and very individualized circumstances.
We must continue our efforts to repeal ObamaCare and push for market-based, patient-centered health reforms.
Just because something is true on average doesn't mean it is true for everyone. Just ask the thousands of women who've benefited from Avastin.
The government shouldn't be deciding which drugs are effective and which ones aren't; that decision belongs to you and your doctor.
Please help us in the fight to make sure that's where that decision stays.