An op-ed in today's LA Times really got me going...so much so that I wrote a letter to the editor.  The op-ed, titled "When I'm really old, put me on that ice floe" by Ira Rosofsky is generally about the rationing of health care that happens "naturally" within our current system to folks who can't afford insurance or are underinsured.

He goes on to talk about Medicare as being the ice floe for elderly folks who account for 1/4 of all medical expenditures.  And then have the temerity to require nearly 30% of all Medicare expenditures for end of life care.  (Thoughtless bastards, these old folks.)

From there, he goes on to refererence an article about the relative cost/benefit equation of cetuximab (a chemo drug) for people with non-small cell lung cancers.  He notes that the average life extension for such patients is 1.2 months at a cost of $80,000.

"That means it would cost $800,000 to prolong the life of a patient for one year," he says.

Unfortunately, Rosofsky doesn't realize (or found it inconvenient) to address the definition of "average."  Some patients no doubt have much more benefit from the drug...others have none.  So his $800,000 for an extra year doesn't work.

More irritatingly, he trots out the cultural paradigm of what such life extension is like by saying, "...not to mention the pain and suffering and the reduced quality of life from a treatmehnt that marginally prolongs life."

As someone who has expensive chemo drugs every other week, I would like to point out to Mr. Rosofsky (and to all and sundry) that our cultural trope about cancer treatments being "hell" are not so for many, if not the majority, of people living with cancer.

I like my life on chemo quite well, thank you.  Don't be shoving me onto your ice floe.

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