There has been a lot of questions raised about why the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has out of the clear blue, launched a review of Provenge, a review that could ultimately make Provenge unavailable to men on Medicare and Medicaid (see the post:Medicare Funding for Provenge, We Urgently Need Your HELP). There [...]
Mike Scott who writes the THE “NEW” PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK today published an excellent summary/discussion about survival time for men with metastatic prostate cancer. He presents a synopsis about anticipated survival going back to the late 1980s and brings the conversation up to our current condition. He reminds us that our next big step will [...]
How are funding decisions made for Medicare and Medicaid? What drugs are to be funded? These questions have recently come to our attention as many of us have attempted to have Medicare fund our use of Provenge. The administration of Medicare is actually broken into 15 different regions, or MACs (Medicare Administrative Contractors). Each MAC [...]
Those of us advanced prostate cancer survivors who are younger than 65 years and who live in the United States often face a major dilemma if we are unable to continue to work. Medicare will not provide us with medical insurance until we reach that magic age of 65 years. We can apply for social [...]
From Yahoo (posted today): Men and Women looking out for each other: * 43% of searches on Yahoo! Health for Prostate Cancer come from women * 33% of searches on Yahoo! Health for Breast Cancer come from men * 25% of searches on Yahoo! Health for Ovarian Cancer come from men * 38% of searches [...]
It is truly amazing and very shocking, from 1996 to 1999, the U.S. food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 157 new drugs. Compared to the period of 2006 to 2009 the FDA approved 74 drugs. However, NOT one of these approved drugs provided a cure for any serious illness! Diseases that destroy lives, diseases like [...]
In June of 2009 a team at UCSF Department of Urology announced a new prostate cancer risk assessment test that they claim can provide men and their doctors a better way of gauging long-term risks and pinpointing high risk cases of prostate cancer. The test, as indicated by the researchers, proved accurate in predicting bone [...]
President Barack Obama has nominated Harold E. Varmus, M.D., the Nobel Prize-winning scientist for studies showing how certain normal genes could cause cancer when they went awry; to serve as the 14th director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Varmus served as director of the National Institutes of Health in the 1990s, a period [...]
Dear President Obama, Prostate cancer will hit one in every six American men. This means that one in every six families will also be affected by prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is the second biggest cancer killer of American men. Sadly, many people don’t know that prostate cancer kills so many men. Prostate cancer is a [...]
Listening in on the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC) Reviewing Evidence on the use of Radiation Therapy for Localized Prostate Cancer
