{"id":185132,"date":"2011-10-03T18:42:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T23:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/10\/03\/if-only-they-could-both-lose-2\/"},"modified":"2011-10-03T18:42:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-03T23:42:00","slug":"if-only-they-could-both-lose-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/10\/03\/if-only-they-could-both-lose-2\/","title":{"rendered":"If Only They Could both Lose\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a battle between <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/10\/03\/business\/blue-shield-of-california-wont-cover-breast-cancer-drug.html?ref=business\">an insurance company and a pharmaceutical company over a drug that probably doesn&#8217;t work but has a lot of fans<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>Blue Shield of California will no longer pay for the use of the drug Avastin to treat breast cancer, a sign that support for the widely debated and expensive treatment may be eroding among health plans.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Shield, with 3.2 million members, is apparently the first large insurance company to end payments since a federal advisory committee unanimously recommended in June that the Food and Drug Administration rescind Avastin\u2019s approval as a treatment for breast cancer, saying the drug did not really help patients.<\/p>\n<p>The F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, has not made a final decision, so Avastin retains its approval for now.<\/p>\n<p>Because it is an emotional and politically contentious issue, with some women saying the drug is keeping them alive, many insurers have said they will wait until a final decision from the F.D.A. before re-evaluating their coverage policies. And Medicare has indicated it will continue paying for the drug even if the F.D.A. revokes the approval.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Until people realize that there is not a problem with the <b>cost<\/b> of prescription drugs because the real problem is the <b>price<\/b> of drugs, and so private solutions to innovation, with the associated exclusivity provisions, are the problem, not the solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a battle between an insurance company and a pharmaceutical company over a drug that probably doesn&#8217;t work but has a lot of fans: Blue Shield of California will no longer pay for the use of the drug Avastin to treat breast cancer, a sign that support for the widely debated and expensive treatment may &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1046,1045,1109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare","category-insurance","category-ip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}