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Health Reform Law begins taking affect

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Anonymous

Guest
Here is an e-mail I received from Consumers Union- and something important for folks to know....

The worst thing most of us can imagine is getting diagnosed with a serious illness. The next worst thing – discovering your insurance company won’t pay for your medical care after a certain point.

Starting next month, the new health reform law prohibits insurance companies from limiting the amount of care you get in your lifetime. That means at a time when you need help the most, the medical care you were promised will be there.

We’d like to hear from anyone who is reaching their lifetime health insurance limit or has already hit it. Your experiences will help us do a better job at making sure the health reform law is working for those who need it most.

Over 100 million Americans have health insurance right now that puts some form of a lifetime limit on their care. Health reform eliminates those lifetime caps on any policy issued or renewed after Sept. 23. And over the next four years, limits on the amount of care you can receive each year will be phased out until they, too, are eliminated.

These caps make us vulnerable at the worst time. People are losing their benefits while battling cancer or needing a costly transplant. We’ve all seen the flyers, fundraisers and other methods used by families trying to cover the cost of needed care.
 

Mike

Well-known member
No wonder my premiums have gone up. :roll:

Avastin, the world’s best selling cancer drug, is primarily used to treat colon cancer and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2008 for use on women with breast cancer that has spread.

It costs $8,000 (£5,000) a month and is given to about 17,500 women in the US a year. The drug was initially approved after a study found that, by preventing blood flow to tumours, it extended the amount of time until the disease worsened by more than five months. However, two new studies have shown that the drug may not even extend life by an extra month.

The FDA advisory panel has now voted 12-1 to drop the endorsement for breast cancer treatment. The panel unusually cited "effectiveness" grounds for the decision. But it has been claimed that "cost effectiveness" was the real reason ahead of reforms in which the government will extend health insurance to the poorest.

If the approval of the drug is revoked then US insurers would be likely to stop paying for Avastin.

The Avastin recommendation led to revived allegations that President Barack Obama’s overhaul of the US health care system would mean many would be denied treatments currently available.

During the debate, those opposed to the reforms cited Britain’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which decides whether new treatments should be made available on the NHS on the basis of cost effectiveness, as an example of the sort of drug rationing that amounted to a "death panel".

David Vitter, the Republican Senator for Louisiana, said the FDA decision amounted to rationing health care.

"I shudder at the thought of a government panel assigning a value to a day of a person’s life," he said. "It is sickening to think that care would be withheld from a patient simply because their life is not deemed valuable enough.

"I fear this is the beginning of a slippery slope leading to more and more rationing under the government takeover of health care that is being forced on the American people."
 
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