Posted on 02/01/2012 9:30:37 PM PST by Nachum
A ‘breakthrough’ drug that gives extra months of life to men with advanced prostate cancer has been rejected for use on the NHS. The once-daily pill was developed by UK scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and trials were partly funded by British charities. But it has been branded as too expensive by the rationing watchdog the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Abiraterone is the latest prostate cancer drug to face an NHS ban despite being proven to extend life for men with advanced disease. Last month another drug--Jevtana--was turned down as ‘not cost-effective’.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
What do you expect? NHS is not about survival.
If it was a free market system, at the start the costs of the new medications would limit their use to the rich. But as their manufacturers started to try to expand their markets, they would ease prices a bit and more people would be able to use it, a cycle which would continue until (if the treatment keeps on panning out) it would come within reach of the commoner.
Unless of course, the government has outlawed private medical practice and coopted all doctors into the govt system. This is what has happened with NHS, no?
Then they have every right to expect the govt to do exactly that, pay the bill for whatever medicine would extend their lives as long as humanly possible. Just as they would if they were under a private medical system and health insurance system. Otherwise, what's the use of having a health care system?
Sorry I don’t follow your logic. Any system whether its health care or the store down the street can only provide the services it can afford. If you want more you pay more.
Witness one of the endgame results for ROMNEYCARE/OBAMACARE aka SOCIALIZED MEDICINE AT WORK IN THE U.K.
Startup costs are always high. It’s a simple consequence of the R&D and manufacturing effort.
Ironically it’s the government’s patent law that facilitates the high cost to consumers.
So if this drug was really cheap you would be all for it right?
Well here's a news flash for ya, most any product that requires significant R&D is expensive when it's first introduced. This goes for drugs, digital cameras, cell phones, safety equipment, hospital equipment and on and on. I had one of the earliest cell phones many years ago and it cost $1500 in 1980s dollars.
I will say this only once because I'm not going to argue with anyone but your logic is not only wrong but it's very dangerous. If reasoning like this had prevailed in the past we would not be anywhere near the level of advanced science that we have today. Many life saving drugs and treatments that are common today were very expensive at one time. You can't put a price on life and while this drug may only extend life briefly for now it may well lead to a cure future.
It appears your reading comprehension is as limited as your ability to communicate more than once.
I am not saying anything anything about the cost of R & D its not a newsflash that the price goes down over time.
What I am saying is that there are many medical treatments and procedures that cannot rationally be justified on a cost basis. Simply put we as a society cannot continue the fiction that life is priceless and spending any amount of money to prolong it is justified.
As I said if the individual pays for the treatment themselves then go for it. But government and business cannot afford it..
There’s a similar sort of issue that arises when you’re talking about an issue that may have individual advantages, but has a collective negative impact. In the prostate cancer field, the PSA test fits that category. When you net out the possibility of saving a life and compare it with the probabilities of overtreatment or negative side effects, the public as a whole is negatively impacted by routine PSA testing.
You run into these same kinds of issues when you attempt to construct a cost effective system that benefits the vast majority of the population. The only solution is to permit self-pay in that kind of system. There are self-pay options to NHS, both in the U.K. and a short hop across the channel.
The public outcry comes from politicians selling these systems as providing all things to all people. There’s just no economically sane way to construct such a thing.
Both both procedures continue to be demanded by the public. The view that any procedure is justified for everyone is bankrupting us all
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