Durbin goes to bat for SIUC coach
Dan Callahan
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., took to the Senate floor today to talk about Dan Callahan, the Southern Illinois University Carbondale baseball coach who has been denied coverage for the costly cancer drug Avastin. You can read the full blog posting here.
Mr. Callahan was the subject of an editorial in Sunday’s Post-Dispatch. You can read it here.
Mr. Durbin singled out WellPoint, the insurance company that administers health insurance coverage for Illinois state employees.
But Genentech, which makes Avastin, is equally worthy of attention. It has pursued a “whatever the market will bear” pricing strategy that puts the drug out of reach.
The Callahans are being charged $13,686 per dose for Avastin. Doctors would like to administer the drug every three weeks to treat Mr. Callahan’s melanoma.
Genentech was purchased for $46.8 billion by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche earlier this year.
John G. Carlton is an editorial writer who covers health care, science, the environment and public utilities. Before joining the editorial page, "Doc" was the newspaper's medical writer for four years. He has also worked at newspapers in Connecticut and New York. He's fond of heavy sarcasm and light anti-tank weapons. He lives in west St. Louis County with his wife, Martha Madigan, their daughter Ana and an overly enthusiastic Australian Shepherd dog, Savannah. 
If only Senator Durbin would nationalize the pharmaceutical industry.
Then new drug discoveries would fall like snowflakes, scientists would work for peanuts, and long-term drug discovery costs would flatten.
It works for Cuba — why wouldn’t it work here?
What has been gained when the insurance companies won’t cover the miracle drugs created by the pharmacy companies?
Health insurance has deteriorated because of the health insurance companies, just as banking and mortgages where destroyed by the very industries themselves. The narrative that big government was more dangerous than big business has been driven by the very people who now need bailouts from the government to continue their irresponsible behavior. At least with a health insurance reform the insured get some protection and a usable product from government intervention. The bailout of Wall Street has done nothing but reinforced their dishonest practices.
Government (public option) insurance called Medicare has the highest record among all insurance entities for DENIAL of claims for benefits. This is the government run entity that Durbin wants to create for everyone. In Medicare, the appeal process is impossible. Amoung private insurers, the appeal process is difficult but can be overcome with pressures. Medicare, the public option, has no need to protect it solvency. Private companies do, hence remain flexible protect their public image while also protecting the bottom line. Medicare doesn’t care about ‘reputational risks’. If anyone thinks government run insurance is the answer in cases like this, they are crazy. Just recall each and every other encunter you have with inflexible government agencies, if you can even find someone that will listen…..extend this experience to healthcare…………nightmare. Don’t listen, don’t go for the government take over………..
Everybody thinks the insurance company and Genentech are out for blood and profits at all costs. I take you back to the original opinion by the STL PD board. It said “Genentech, spent about $2.25 billion to develop it. It spends another $1 billion a year testing it on new cancers” and had about $3.5B in sales last year.
Think about the risk Genentech took when developing this drug, the purpose of which is to fight colon cancer, not melanoma. What if the drug didn’t pan out? They would have spend $2.5B on a drug that didn’t work!
That greedy, evil Genetech currently spends 21% of revenue on R&D, working on new drugs that will cure more diseases. A company has to be able to make a profit. They charge for the drugs what the market will bear out and what it costs for them to stay in business, make money, and develop new drugs.
Also, this drug is not shown to help with melanoma. It’s experimental. The original editorial stated a small study showed that 13 of 53 melanoma patients who received Avastin after 18 months were alive.
It’s so easy to spend the insurance company’s money. What we don’t realize is that unfeeling, greedy insurance company is actually mostly a conduit for our premiums to the medical care provider. I looked up WellPoint financials to see how gross and horrible their huge profits were. They made 4.1% in profits in 2008. 4.1% is NOT a huge profit for most companies. 4.1% is not a gross amount of money to make.
This is certainly a touching story. I really feel for the coach and I understand why we would want to try anything and everything to cure his cancer. But emotion cannot be the only factor in deciding whether a person gets a drug or not. You have to use some reasonableness in making the decision, too.