Back in the day, catching cancer early was considered to be the best policy. The prognosis was brighter, and the treatment was easier.
Not in Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario.
If you get breast cancer in this benighted province, and it’s diagnosed too early, you can’t get a life-saving drug. The tumour has to grow and spread before the government will consider paying the cost of treatment.
I just read that last paragraph again, and pinched myself. I’m awake, all right. That’s McGuintyCare—with Health Minister Deb Matthews as our very own Death Panel chairperson.
Here’s what the wretched Matthews has to say about Jill Anzarut:
We cannot have a health system where the stories that land on the front page of the paper determine our health-care policy. It would be unfair to those who do not get their stories on the front page if we were to give priority to those who do.
This is wrong on too many levels to count. Indeed, her statement really does speak for itself. But doctors speak differently:
[M]edical experts say…that Ontario’s guidelines for breast-cancer treatment are outdated and out of step with those of many other provinces, which cover the drug for smaller tumours.
“You don’t want to give a drug that has side effects and is very expensive to a patient who doesn’t really need it,” said Ellen Warner, an oncologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and director of the hospital’s PYNK breast cancer program for young women. “But I think there’s enough evidence that at least a portion of these tumours are going to relapse and it’s not a trivial portion.”
A public outcry has worked in Ontario in the past. This one needs to continue. In the meantime, Liberal politicians in Ontario ought to be forced to carry a health warning.