Interesting,,three of the councils turned all requests down and others approved more. So it was purely budgetary. That is what we face.
Turning freely available resources, cancer drugs, into sparse commodities with rationing.
This creates the lifeboat situation that E Emmanuel writes about and the “ethical dilemmas” of who to pay for.
I suspect that here in the US to get any treatment for cancer beyond the proven standard treatment will take a patient right to clinical trials. That is a huge part of treatment now.
But I don’t know that a new system would want trials or that companies would invest in them,,to expensive you know and creates a need and a right for effective new expensive drugs.
Our system will slow and halt. No more new lifesaving drugs will emerge from companies who have no incentive to develope them.
My husband attended a medical conference in Britain in June. His impression of the conference was that the research presented was all in the area of cost containment and analyzing how well the techs perform the services that a doctor would do here. They rely on the US for true medical advancement.