NICE = not so nice

Massachusetts helped us dodge this type of bullet.

This is what a Death Panel looks like. It may not be dramatic, but here we have bureaucrats making financial decisions which will result in cancer patients not receiving a treatment which might possibly benefit them.

"Sorry. This isn't for you."

And here lies the problem. If it isn’t used, it will remain expensive.

So in effect, socialized medicine cripples new cures.

The problem with government provided health care is in having to sacrifice yourself to the good of the collective and in inherent inefficiencies and stifling of innovation.

However...there is a cost problem in the delivery of modern medical care. No medical regime can afford to marginally extend every lifespan with disregard to cost. Purely private health care would work out the cost problem but any third-party health care will have arbitrary rules much like the NHS.

And, if the pharma industry sees rejection for these kinds of drugs, it will not invest in R&D in this area.

...NHS resources are limited and Nice has to decide which treatments represent best value to the patient... - Best VALUE, mind you. Not the best health outcome. 0bamacare, coming soon to a hospital near you. So, if your wife or kids are deathly ill, the government experts will decide what is the best VALUE. This scares the s**t out of me. No lie.

this drug is used on drug eluting stents to help prevent restinosis, so it is getting used (fairly extensively) regardless of the UK.

Your point is a good one, but when health care outlays are managed by a monolithic gummint rather than the private sector there is less room for bargaining. So, while private insurers will have to grapple with similar issues, I would rather deal with them...

.....”Although evidence implies that this treatment is clinically effective, there is limited data about how long it can extend life. Everolimus is an expensive drug and we have to be sure the evidence on its effectiveness is robust before we recommend it....

That was true for EVERY cancer drug when it was first introduced, going back to the late 1940s!!!! When oncologists learned how to best use the drugs (different patient groups, different combinations of drugs, etc.), life extension and cost effectiveness greatly improved, and often complete remissions were achieved.

“NICE” IS a death panel!!!! Tom Daschle, among other obama advisors, is enamored with “NICE”. If we had a death panel like this in the US, not only would more patients die prematurely, but there would be NO biomedical innovations!!!!

There are people with good ideas about improving health care in our country. We should listen to them, not Tony Blair and his “NICE”, Daschle, Sunstein, and obama!!!!

The use of drugs like this one on stents is a different issue...MUCH smaller amount of the drug used to coat a stent, but more important, the clinical development that Novartis had to invest in for the cancer indication has nothing whatsoever to do with the cardiac indication. Apples to Buicks.

PING*

I can’t say it enough-GOVERNMENT DOESN’T LIKE EXPENSIVE PATIENTS. Those who actually think our overall healthcare will improve with Socialized Medicine are delusional. I suspect most people who still support Zero’s HCR KNOW it won’t be better care. It’s just the control over all Americans that they want.

Your point is a good one, but when health care outlays are managed by a monolithic gummint rather than the private sector there is less room for bargaining. So, while private insurers will have to grapple with similar issues, I would rather deal with them...

Dealing with a government agency is usually the worst case. Unless you are for whom there are no rules.

The problems of medical life extension, and the cost of same, were predicted long ago. It was said that we would no longer be able to say "It's in God's hands now." once things fell into out hands.

The fact is we can not continue to borrow money against future generations earnings and productivity to pay for more advanced (and more expensive) medical treatments. At some point we have to decide that extending our own lives beyond our usefulness is counterproductive. And immoral. If you have to borrow money for your grandkids to pay back in order to extend your own life, it’s time to check out. Our societal evolution has to catch up to our technology.

Stepping away from costs for a minute, more and more I have a problem with medical advances. Sure they do a lot of good things, and I would not want to slow down progress. But I have to say that they also introduce problems and I think society may want to revisit some assumptions and values.

We have a local case where a man killed his teenage daughter, then shot his wife in the face three tiems, then killed himself (financial trouble). The wife has been in critical care for a while and I don't know if she'll make it. If she survives, what will she wake up to? No husband, no daughter -- no face. And probably half a million in debt.

Advanced medical care saved her life. I won't say it's bad. I won't say it's good. I'll just say that I'm not very comfortable with where we are right now.

Your issues are from a government-run perspective, and at least you are honest about it unlike the democrats who lie, mislead and obfuscate the issue; however, from apersonal point of view, people should be allowed to pay for their own care even if their value to society is lost and extending their lives is, as you say, "counterproductive."

I sure wouldn't want anyone like you making health decisions for me or my family.

Typically these drugs cost $5-6000 per month and extend survival 4-10 months. Not much bang for a lot of bucks.

Very true, but hundreds of thousands of doses in use / being used worldwide, which means that the drug is getting used (regardless of what the indication is for), which gos to the original post I responded to...

the drug is being used.

If its too expensive so no one will use it, the company has 2 choices, wasted all that money on a new drug they can’t sell, or lower the price so it can be afforded....

It is what it is, but has different meanings depending on how it may affect you personally; and, patients may pass on this, or opt in. It should be, IMHO, up to the patient and not a gummint panel. That’s the point I was trying to make...it’s a squishy area and quite subjective, so where do we draw the line? Eleven months? 15 months? 2.5 years?