Replies

costs around £1,750 per patient per week.

Or about $2700/week, $136,500/year.

It is thought the drug may extend life from around 9.6 months to more than 13 months

That adds up to $150,000 for an additional 3.4 months. Or about $44,000/month, $10,000/week.

I must be the only conservative left who wonders if this is indeed worth the price.

If it were my own money, I would certainly never spend $150,000 of what I could otherwise leave my children in order to get another 3.4 months.

But I guess if it's the government's money or the insurance company's money such considerations don't matter.

Which brings up the interesting question of how much IS too much.

Should we spend $1M to extend an individual patient's life by a week? $10M? $100M?

There are very real constraints on what we, as a society, can spend. $1M spent on A cannot be spent on anything else. So we really ought to be asking ourselves, "Where do we want to spend that money?"

Conservatism by definition recognizes there is no such thing as a free lunch. The essence of life is dealing with tradeoffs. It is liberalism that insists we cannot only have it all, we can have it for free, or at least make somebody else pay for it.

"I must be the only conservative left who wonders if this is indeed worth the price."

I've seen reports of results from these newer cancer drugs -- and some individuals see very, very good and prolonged responses from them. In any case is it the gov't that should decide? Or should you allow people to buy this treatment themselves, or allow them to purchase chemotherapy riders for their health insurance policies? It might cost a couple of bucks extra on a typical policy. (Similar to NHS, Obamacare's death panels will NOT allow paying that kind of money for cancer drugs.)

But I guess if it's the government's money or the insurance company's money such considerations don't matter.

There are a lot of Freepers who think that anything short of unlimited expenses to prolong life by even a day is the exact equivalent of the Nazi eugenics program.

I've more or less given up arguing with those people.

The flip side is that the government is a big part of why the medications cost so much. Its regulations make drug development very expensive, especially for uncommon conditions in which those costs can't be divided amongst millions of potential customers. They are making the drugs so 'safe' that nobody can afford them. The history of alternative medicine shows that desperate patients are willing to spend loads of money on alleged treatments with scientific proof of neither efficacy nor safety. Opening up the market to products clearly labelled as meeting lower standards, and with corresponding lower potential tort liabilities, would lower monetary costs in trade for the wannabee patient taking on greater non-monetary risks. Caveat emptor instead of the nanny state.

Which brings up the interesting question of how much IS too much.

The question about "how much" is a valid question and should be answered by each individual based upon resource availability and personal values.

When the decision is made by a third party, be that third party the government or an insurance company, then arbitrary factors must be used to make that decision (i.e., death panels).

That, right there, is the reason why any kind of third party payer scheme is just plain wrong.