YOUR PRAYERS ARE WORKING

Every day this week I shaved, brushed my teeth, showered, dressed myself, made my own breakfast. Big steps for a recovering invalid.

I have multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer. Just after I started chemo, I fell down the stairs, tore my left anterior cruciate ligament, complicating treatment for both.

For the last six weeks, I’ve essentially been confined to my bed, with another week or so to go. If you sent me an email, and I haven’t responded, this is why.

I hate being an invalid even more than I thought I would. But I have so much to be grateful for.

From the parking lot attendants and transporters to the nurses, physician assistants and doctors at Passavant Hospital here in Pittsburgh, I’ve received caring and superb treatment.

Oncologist Brian McLaughlin has the best communication skills of any doc I’ve ever encountered. Nurses say Dr. William Abraham of Tri-Rivers Surgical Associates, who repaired my knee, should autograph his work. He’s that good.

I’m very grateful to my employer and to the union at the Post-Gazette, for providing a health plan that’s made it possible to obtain the excellent care I’ve been getting. I’m grateful also to management for letting me work from home while I’m laid up.

I owe so much to my wife Pam. Caring for an invalid with cancer puts enormous strain on the caregiver. I couldn’t get along without Pam’s management of the meds I must take each day and night, am so grateful to her for feeding and bathing me when I couldn’t do these things for myself.

Since my injury, Mollie, our Maltese, hasn’t wanted to leave my side.

I’ve been amazed so many are praying for me. Your prayers are working. The first two rounds of chemotherapy have reduced sharply the symptoms of my cancer.

I was in Stage 3 – the highest – when I was diagnosed. If I weren’t getting the care I’m getting, my life expectancy probably would be measured in months.

The innumerate prattle about a “right” to health care. There is no such thing, because no one has a right to put his or her hands into someone else’s pockets. But we should do everything we reasonably can to put quality care within reach of as many people as possible.

Since the president said Obamacare would reduce them by $2,500, health insurance premiums for the average family have risen $4,865. The Kaiser Family Foundation says deductibles are three times higher now than before Obamacare, are rising seven times faster than wages. Co-pays are going up too.

One of the cancer pills I take costs $1,000 a pop. The staggering cost of developing a new drug is now north of $1 billion. Total drug development time – about 3 years in 1960 – is around 15 years today.

The chief reason why it costs so much and takes so long to get a new drug to market is overregulation by the Food and Drug Administration. About 85% of the cost of developing a new drug is the cost of complying with FDA regulations. When in 1962 the FDA began testing drugs for efficacy as well as safety, development time and costs doubled virtually overnight, have been rising ever since.

The huge increase in cost isn’t the worst consequence of FDA overregulation. Americans often are the last to benefit from new life saving medicines developed by American pharmaceutical companies. The FDA is truly dangerous to your health.

The first steps to giving more Americans access to quality care are to repeal Obamacare, and to make the FDA’s opinions about drug efficacy advisory only.   That’s not enough. Many more steps are needed.

A third step could be to provide a refundable tax credit for purchase of health insurance. This would be enormously expensive, unaffordable as an in addition to, with budget deficits as high as they are. But we could offset the cost of a refundable credit by slashing the $432 billion we spend on a Medicaid program riddled with waste, inefficiency, and fraud.

Better yet are the ten steps advocated by Jack Wheeler in his proposed Health Freedom legislation. As he suggests, you should really consider emailing or sending a printed copy of his Health Freedom Vs. Obamacare Fascism to your local media, your congressman and senators, plus anyone else you can think of.

And once again, thank you all for your prayers. They mean so much to Pam and me… and they are working.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration. He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.