Reducing Medical Expense

Sherrod Campbell Brown, the junior United States Senator from the state of Ohio held forth on the Senate Floor today on the subject of the high cost of Biological Drugs used in the treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The “therapeutic” effect these drugs have is to interrupt the patient’s immune system to lessen the autoimmune arthritis. However the inevitable side effect of foiling the body’s immune protection is opportunistic infections that arise from the patient’s reduced resistance to disease.

So while Senator Brown is correct in lamenting the short term cost of these drugs, he has ignored the longer-term cost reduction factor resulting from the early demise of regular users of Biologics. Sadly, these patients will, soon enough, cease their expensive therapy upon their drug induced passing.Dr. Kevorkian

The use of these drugs could alternatively be considered slow-motion euthanasia over the terminal period they continue with this therapy.

Some form of Euthanasia is practiced in Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Thailand, and the U.S. statesofOregon and Washington. As our politicians flirt with ways to introduce a more European health care system in the US, we should be alert to the implications.

One idea that has been floated to finance the new Health Care Plan is to transfer the spending on Medicare Beneficiaries to the care of everyone within our borders. Euthanasia has apparently been cost effective in Europe; let’s hope for the sake of American Seniors we don’t welcome this foreign idea to this side of the Atlantic Ocean.