Posted by
Always To The Right on Saturday, March 07, 2009 2:27:18 PM
The gatekeeper for Great Britain's national health care system is
denying cancer patients drugs that would extend their lives. Why?
Because the medication is considered too expensive.
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What's a life worth? Apparently not much in Great Britain.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the
government agency that decides which treatments the National Health
Service will pay for, has effectively banned Lapatinib, a drug that was
shown to slow the progression of breast cancer, and Sutent, which is
the only medicine that can prolong the lives of some stomach cancer
patients.
Banning beneficial drugs due to cost is nothing new in Britain.
NICE, which has to be one of history's most ironic acronyms, forbade
the use of Tarceva, a lung cancer drug proven to extend patients'
lives, and Abatacept, even though it's one of the only drugs that has
been shown in clinical testing to improve severe rheumatoid arthritis.
Once again, we have to ask: Do we really want to use the British system as the model for a U.S. health care regime?
So does the Canadian plan, which is plagued with unhealthy and often deadly waiting times for treatment.
The Swedish government system is no better. It also refuses to
provide some expensive medication and, inhumanely, refuses to let
patients buy the drugs themselves. Why? According to a Journal of
American Physicians and Surgeons article, bureaucrats believe doing so
"would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine."
. . . Like Canadians, Swedes are subjected to long waits. They also have denial-of-care problems that sometimes lead to death.