Nov 1, 10:34 PM EST
Election-Eve Plan Would Expand Cancer Care
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration announced an election-eve proposal Monday to expand Medicare coverage for certain clinical trials for cancer drugs and pay cancer doctors to measure patient reaction to potent medication.
The government also would pay for PET scans, or positron emission tomography, for cervical cancer and for studies of effectiveness of the scan for other cancers, Medicare chief Mark McClellan said.
"This is a set of steps to help develop better evidence on what works," McClellan said. He said the timing was not related to the election. "We're way past any political influence here," he said.
The proposal would apply to a small number of Medicare patients - more than 1,000, officials said - who would enroll in nine clinical trials soon to be undertaken by the National Cancer Institute. The trials will test whether medicines approved for treating colorectal cancer are effective on a range of other cancers, a practice known as off-label use.
(more)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MEDICARE_CANCER?SITE=SCCOL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULTGee, they wouldn't be PANDERING by any chance, would they?
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