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N.I.C.E have rejected yet another breast cancer drug.......
imrightok
Posts: 8,492 Forum Member
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Because it's too expensive. I'm not the biggest fan of N.I.C.E and think they wield too much power, but is it worth spending £90.000 per person for something that will extend your life for another 6 months ?
Personally for me i think I would rather get the inevitable out of the way; although it's easy to say that whilst I'm not in that position
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/11164121.Consultant_criticises_watchdog_s_refusal_to_back_cancer_drug/
Personally for me i think I would rather get the inevitable out of the way; although it's easy to say that whilst I'm not in that position
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/11164121.Consultant_criticises_watchdog_s_refusal_to_back_cancer_drug/
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Yeah, exactly what I was thinking; and then one of their reps says:
Jayson Dellas, general manager of Roche Products Limited, said: “Roche is extremely disappointed that NICE has failed to safeguard the interests of patients with this advanced stage of aggressive disease.”
I'm thinking if you're so concerned why not put your prices down.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-hit-for-millions-by-overcharging-scam-8708292.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10203748/Drug-companies-accused-of-overcharging-NHS-face-fraud-inquiry.html
I know for someone with the type of cancer the drug impacts, 6 months extra time (on average) would be priceless
and yet you think proper inquests are a bad idea.
Those people are already dead, so not really a comparison.
The second tablet, and every one after it, off the production line may take cost a "few quid" but the first one costs hundreds of millions of pounds in R&D and clinical trials.
There has to be a fair balance here. The pharmaceutical companies have to be able to make a profit in order to fund future research but the taxpayer cannot be expected to have a bottomless supply of money in order to buy the new treatments.
What you say is true but it's not as though they are skint.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA3J08T20140420?irpc=932
Of course they aren't skint. Curing disease is a very profitable business (because people survive to develop even more diseases), but they would be soon if they started giving away too many drugs.
Who's talking about giving away?
Drugs companies have been accused of “highway robbery” of the NHS by using a legal loophole to push up the price of medicines in some cases by up to 2,000 per cent – at a cost to the taxpayer of tens of millions a year.
At least 15 drugs have substantially increased in price after being “flipped” from one firm to another, according to information obtained by doctors.
Strange how the NHS is often criticized for having a post code lottery on drugs and treatment.
46 billion CHF sales - 18 billion CHF profit. (2013) That appears to be nearly 40% gross margin.
The research budget was 9.2 billion CHF in 2010. You can see why drug companies are making such large profits and having a merger spree
You can say that but you know you're inconsistent with your compassion (or more likely just saying things to get a reaction)
so £90000 X 1500 is £135million a year. The NHS has limited resources, Money spent on this drug would mean money not spent elsewhere. As harsh as this decision sounds I feel that NICE have made the right decision.
Plus there is only a 1 in 5 chance (20%) it will work.
I know that no comfort to the families of those it may help, but those seem pretty poor statistics for something that is being charged at £90,000 per person.
and of course, this is just one drug we are talking about, I wonder how many more drugs are turned down by NICE on cost. Sadly if the go-ahead was given on all drugs by NICE the cost would be billions of pounds.
It is all too easy to look at one solitary case without looking at the whole picture. Just one occasion might well be OK and the cost affordable but then multiply that by the number of patients that would require and benefit all be it temporary from these drugs and it is evident with the best will in the world the cost is just prohibitive.
Like IVF.
I can say it because it's a fact. They're dead, and no amount of money (or inquiries) will bring them back. But whilst a person is alive, that's a harder thing to assign a monetary value to. The other thing to note of course is that I have different opinions about different things, and don't necessarily have a uniformly-biased view across every one of them.
While I can see why some people would want this, I don't think it should be available on the NHS, it costs a lot of money at the moment, and it doesn't actually give the person a lot longer to live.
Now if this person wants to pay for this treatment themselves, then I do think it should be available to them if they want it, although personally I would rather save the £90,000 and then leave this money for my family for when the inevitable happens.
The loss of a loved on is heartbreaking, but having the money after their death means there are less worries after their death than if you spent that amount on the treatment.
I have always said that if I should get cancer, if a treatment would only give me the chance to live for a short period more, I would enjoy the little bit of life that I had left rather than going through the pain of treatment just to prolong the the inevitable anyway.
As the advert says, Cancer is a pratt!
I agree. It falls far short of an effective medicine when the statistics are evaluated, hence the NICE findings.
I often wonder why Big Pharma bothers wasting all this money in R&D for drugs that aren't that good - and then I realise, it's all about holding the desperate to ransom.
Meanwhile, they aren't bothering to research new antibiotics as we enter an age where bacteria have mutated to become increasingly resistant.
It's more to do with the fact that if we ever want a cure for cancer (or rather cancers as they are all different) then there will be many stepping stones along the way of drugs which "aren't that good". It's not money wasted just as plane, TV and car designers went through many models which were fairly rubbish by modern standards.
We aren't many years away from having the ability to design drugs for specific a patient's DNA rather than the population as a whole in Personalised Medicine. Even the best drugs don't work on everyone and the side effects can be unpredictable at best and lethal at worst.