Thank you for, and I applaude the current review
being undertaken by CMS concerning the conundrum
of proton beam therapy. Though it is and remains
a reputable and effective treatment with clear
indications for certain specific malignacies,
there should be grave concern for what I see is a
concerted effort to apply it, at great added
cost, to cancers with minimal to no PROVEN added
benefit in terms of cure and complication rates,
ie. prostate cancer. The proton beam industry
has now focused a substantial amount of marketing
resources in an effort to convince the public
with unsubstantiated claims of superior benefits
of proton beam in comparison to the current
available alternative cost efficient treatments.
There are hundreds of thousands of men who are
pleased after having undergone alternative
treatments (surgery, IMRT, IGRT, brachytherapy)
that have been so maligned by the proton beam
activists. What is clear is that our tax funded
health care dollars and resources are strained to
the breaking point of insolvency under the weight
of these expensive endevours, with little
existing credible evidence of improved outcomes
or side effects/complications. The significant
premium reimbursement now being paid by CMS for
proton beam treatment has encouraged the proton
beam cottage industry to accelerate in entering
financial partnerships with health networks to
construct these astoundingly expensive proton
beam facilities. I do not see the justification
in allocating our limited health care resources
for this, and request a thorough critical
analysis of proton beam therapy relative to other
therapies for prostate cancer before
reimbursement for this treatment continues.