By now you know that Sen. John McCain squandered his last chance at making a real positive difference in the United States. He voted “yes” to allow the Republican-controlled legislative branch of our government to continue to pursue the human and economic disaster of repealing Obamacare.
The fact that Sen. John McCain is a raging hypocrite is not news. McCain has always been an awful abomination of an elected official. Frankly, McCain should have gone to jail for his involvement in the savings and loan debacle of the late 1980s, so this realization is nothing new. What is new is that McCain has recently been diagnosed with a terrible disease—brain cancer. More specifically, he is battling glioblastoma, which is a very aggressive form of the disease. The prognosis for the disease, even with the less difficult placement of the tumor that was recently removed from the senator, is not a great one.
McCain's Mayo doctors said the senator's next treatment options may include a combination of chemotherapy and radiation.
That's standard, and can take weeks to months. Even among those who respond to initial treatment, the cancer can come back, and often within 12 to 24 months. The American Cancer Society puts the five-year survival rate for patients over 55 at about 4 percent.
The road ahead for McCain is a tough one, but he will receive the best treatments known to the history of the world. The fact that Sen. McCain is already wealthy through his marriage to beer heiress Cindy Lou Hensley doesn’t change the fact that McCain won’t be paying out of pocket for the surgeries and treatments he will be receiving in the coming months and possibly years. McCain is covered by our tax dollars, with some excellent insurance.
So, what might it cost Sen. McCain if he say, didn’t have insurance? Say McCain decided to buy a brand new iPhone because his kids kept telling him to get on Facebook and Instagram so he could see pictures of his grandkids. As a result, John McCain couldn’t spend the magical $750 dollars for the magical health insurance Republicans say is available to anybody willing to abstain from buying a smartphone. Let’s run some very conservative numbers, starting with:
Brain surgery. The first thing doctors have done—forget about all of the tests they’ve run and the exams that led to the diagnosis that there was a tumor—is remove a malignant tumor from McCain’s head. According to cost-health helper, the removal of a tumor can range in price.
For patients not covered by health insurance, the typical cost of brain tumor treatment can range from less than $50,000 for a small benign tumor in an accessible location that can be treated with surgery alone up to $700,000 or more for a malignant tumor that must be treated with some combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. For example, the cost of brain surgery is typically $50,000-$150,000 or more.
Let’s just say it’s clearly more than $50,000 as we have all found out that the tumor was indeed malignant. Let’s be generous with this guy—after all, in this hypothetical scenario, he doesn’t have insurance. Let’s say $75,000. Now we need to treat it. Two years ago the costs for cancer treatments were already high, and they’re even higher now. But we can turn back the clock and give this guy a break.
Newly approved cancer drugs cost an average of $10,000 per month, with some therapies topping $30,000 per month, according to ASCO, which discussed the costs of cancer care at a recent meeting. Just a decade ago, the average cost per month of new drugs was about $4,500. Patients typically pay 20 to 30 percent out of pocket for drugs, so an average year's worth of new drugs would cost $24,000 to $36,000 in addition to health insurance premiums.
Sorry, you don’t have insurance, so we’re talking about a couple of hundred thousand dollars a years in drugs—if you survive that long. And as they point out, you’re going to be in and out of doctors’ offices if you are lucky. IF YOU ARE LUCKY.
Those provider and facility fees are no joke. According to UnitedHealthcare data, drugs themselves account for only 24 percent of direct cancer costs. Hospital and outpatient facilities account for 54 percent of costs, and physician fees account for 22 percent.
So let’s say you pay $75,000 up front and we give you a half-price deal on meds, and we get you the cheapest drug treatments. You’ll be paying, in your first year of your fight with cancer, no less than a few hundred thousand dollars—out of pocket. What’s happened to John McCain’s health is tragic and terrible. What Sen. McCain did yesterday is tragic and terrible for millions of people.