TORONTO - Ontario's decision to cut off funding for cancer patients who are taking a costly but potentially lifesaving drug is unreasonable, wrong and "verges on cruelty," the province's ombudsman said in a new report released Wednesday.
Several colorectal cancer patients were forced to pay for Avastin out of their own pockets or stop treatment after they reached an arbitrary limit set by the government, said ombudsman Andre Marin.
The government stops funding the drug after 16 two-week treatments, or about eight months, a limit that isn't supported by medical evidence, he added.
Of the seven provinces that fund Avastin, only Ontario has a hard cap on the number of publicly funded treatments, he said.
The patients who received public funding for the drug, which costs about $3,000 per treatment, faced a "hideous irony" once they finished their publicly funded treatments, Marin said.
"Thanks to the drugs that the government paid for, they were lucky enough to beat the odds and survive past 16 cycles with no cancer growth," he said.
"Their government rewarded them by saying, 'Sorry, we're cutting you off.' If you want to keep taking the drug, it's up to you to figure out how to pay for it."'
He's calling on the province to lift the cap and pay for treatment on a case-by-case basis for patients doing well on the drug, and compensate patients who have paid to continue with the treatment.
The ministry did not agree to those recommendations, but said it would work with Cancer Care Ontario toward a new compassionate review policy for cancer drugs, Marin said.
But there's a big problem with the policy: it's not compassionate, he said.
It requires patients who have been cut off from funding for Avastin to demonstrate that they've tried chemotherapy and it didn't work, he said.
"What's proposed essentially is a not-so-clever catch-22 solution, where cancer victims continue to be a victim no matter what they do," he said.
"This policy right now as it's proposed is as dumb as a bag of hammers, and has nothing to do with compassion. It's contrived compassion, not genuine compassion. So we can't accept it as a solution. It just doesn't work."
Marin launched the investigation into Ontario's funding of the chemotherapy drug Avastin in June to determine whether it makes sense to cap support for patients suffering from cancer.
The probe of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care's policies for the drug was prompted by complaints from patients, as well as a letter from Progressive Conservative Joyce Savoline, that the 16-cycle limit appears to be arbitrary.
"The funding limit flies in the face of the acceptable standard of oncology practice in this province and beyond," Marin said in his report.
"Regrettably, this situation verges on cruelty for those already afflicted by this unrelenting illness. In the case of Avastin, it is impossible to justify the human price exacted by the current administration's inflexible and dispassionate application of the funding limit."
Marin also noted that the government has the right to decide that a drug is too expensive to fund, but once a decision is made, any move to cap funding should take patient progress into account.
Health Minister David Caplan was expected to speak about Marin's findings Wednesday afternoon.
About 22,000 Canadians are diagnosed with colon cancer each year -- 8,100 in Ontario.
The Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada says roughly 2,400 of the people diagnosed in the province are getting some kind of chemotherapy with or without Avastin.
According to government figures, the average length of survival for people who receive Avastin with other chemotherapy is close to two years, compared to 15 months without the drug.
As part of the investigation, the special ombudsman response team conducted interviews with people affected by the restriction and reviewed ministry documentation to determine why the decision was made.
