The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that four New Jersey congressmen and its own former commissioner unduly influenced the process that led to its decision last year to approve a patch for injured knees, an approval it is now revisiting.
The agency’s scientific reviewers repeatedly and unanimously over many years decided that the device, known as Menaflex and manufactured by ReGen Biologics Inc., was unsafe because the device often failed, forcing patients to get another operation.
But after receiving what an F.D.A. report described as “extreme,” “unusual” and persistent pressure from four Democrats from New Jersey – Senators Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg and Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. and Steven R. Rothman – agency managers overruled the scientists and approved the device for sale in December.
All four legislators made their inquiries within a few months of receiving significant campaign contributions from ReGen, which is based in New Jersey, but all said they had acted appropriately and were not influenced by the money. Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, the former drug agency’s commissioner, said he had acted properly.
The only way to get money out of politics is to de-regulate so that government has no influence in the free market. If government doesn’t influence the free market, then businesses would have no reason to give contributions to politicians at all. Republicans are the party of limited government and small businesses, and Democrats are the party of ACORN, unions, lawyers, and Planned Parenthood.
Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.
Agreements between Detroit hospitals and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for heart, imaging tests, bariatric and other services provide access to some services not immediately available in the province, said ministry spokesman David Jensen.
The agreements show how a country with a national care system — a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress — copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities.
I am not so sure that we should be adopting single-payer health care. Who can we cut a deal with to reduce our waiting list delays?
A MUM suffering chest pains died in front of her young son hours after being sent home from hospital and told to take painkillers.
Debra Beavers, 39, phoned NHS 24 twice in two days before getting a hospital appointment. But a doctor gave what her family described as a cursory examination lasting 11 minutes, before advising her to buy over-the-counter medicine Ibuprofen.
Family members claim the medic was abrupt and rude – and when Debra clutched her chest, he told her: “Your heart is on the other side.”
Seven hours later, the mum-of-two collapsed and died from a heart attack in front of her 13-year-old boy.
The government-run health care administrators say that no mistakes were made:
[…]A spokeswoma for NHS Fife said: “We would like to express our condolences. NHS Fife’s duty to uphold patient confidentiality prevents us from making any comment on an individual case.”
NHS 24 executive nurse director Eunice Muir said: “We can confirm Ms Beavers contacted NHS 24 and that her onward referral was managed safely and appropriately.
“We would ask her family to contact us if there are any aspects of the case they wish to discuss.”
Believe me, this kind of rushing through examinations is exactly the kind of thing you can expect when the government is paying instead of the patient. When the government pays for health care, the doctor has ZERO incentive to provide good quality. You have one choice of provider. That means you either take the bad treatment paid for by the government or you can go home and die.
And if you don’t like it, you have NO RECOURSE. Because this is the government you are dealing with! Nothing is going to happen to fix it because no one has any profit incentive to fix it. Everyone involved is probably unionized, so no one can be fired. The customer has no rights in a socialized system, which is exactly what Barack Obama said he wanted in that video from 2003.
Free market capitalism is designed to protect people by forcing the providers of products and services to please the customer better than any other competing vendors. Government-run health destroys these incentives by 1) removing the leverage that the customer have the money, and 2) removing the customer’s ability to choose another vendor if they are not happy.
Recall that Obama said that people should get painkillers instead of surgery in this video. When will people understand? The left has swallowed all kinds of lies about global warming, overpopulation, gun control, and everything in between. They have misdiagnosed the problems we face and are proposing solutions are worse than the problems themselves, because of their ignorance of reality.
Dogs have better health care than people in socialized systems
In the last few years, I have had the opportunity to compare the human and veterinary health services of Great Britain, and on the whole it is better to be a dog.
As a British dog, you get to choose (through an intermediary, I admit) your veterinarian. If you don’t like him, you can pick up your leash and go elsewhere, that very day if necessary. Any vet will see you straight away, there is no delay in such investigations as you may need, and treatment is immediate. There are no waiting lists for dogs, no operations postponed because something more important has come up, no appalling stories of dogs being made to wait for years because other dogs—or hamsters—come first.
The conditions in which you receive your treatment are much more pleasant than British humans have to endure. For one thing, there is no bureaucracy to be negotiated with the skill of a white-water canoeist; above all, the atmosphere is different. There is no tension, no feeling that one more patient will bring the whole system to the point of collapse, and all the staff go off with nervous breakdowns. In the waiting rooms, a perfect calm reigns; the patients’ relatives are not on the verge of hysteria, and do not suspect that the system is cheating their loved one, for economic reasons, of the treatment which he needs.
Steyn knows what he is talking about – he escaped the nightmare of fully socialized medicine in Canada. The profit motive coupled with a competitive free market is the only solution proven to reduce the cost of medical care. The government has no incentive to give you health care when you are old – you are no longer supplying them with tax money! That’s why the Democrats want to be able to deny treatment to the elderly.
WINTERY KNIGHT 