$93,000 for four months for prostate cancer

Medicare will pay $93,000 for the drug Provenge, a therapy that typically gives men suffering from prostate cancer an extra four months to live ["Medicare to pay for Provenge," News, March 31].

And your report said "millions of men would be able to afford the drug through the government-backed health care coverage."

That would be $93 billion for each million of those millions of men. Who made that decision?

If I believed that I could have four more months to live, I would never ask my wife or heirs to waste so much of their future for such an insignificant difference in mine. But wait, that is my money and it will go to someone whether I would make that choice or not.

I am a loud and proud liberal with an overriding conscience who is all for strengthening Social Security and expanding Medicare to cover all Americans, and I would choose to use that Provenge money to help the young, the poor, the suffering, but never to keep a dead man walking for four more measly months.

Who made that decision and how much influence did the manufacturer of that drug use to get it?

James Moyssiadis

Mount Sinai