Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
How do you put a price on life? How would you know where to start? In the case of the independent NHS watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), there is a points system, which calculates QALYs, or quality-adjusted life years. If a new drug costs more than £30,000 per QALY, then it's deemed too expensive for use by the NHS. So it's a bit rich for Roche, developers of the new breast cancer drug Kadcyla, to be acting all shocked that Nice says it's too expensive for use by the NHS. At the moment, treatment with Kadcyla costs more than £180,000 per QALY. Which is clearly quite steep.
Still, as usual, Nice is being portrayed as the villain. Negative decisions by Nice are typically greeted with a response from the media that invites people to imagine how they would feel if they needed a life-saving drug and bureaucrats denied to them. This one has been no different.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/25/kadcyla-cancer-drug-too-expensive-nhs
Still, as usual, Nice is being portrayed as the villain. Negative decisions by Nice are typically greeted with a response from the media that invites people to imagine how they would feel if they needed a life-saving drug and bureaucrats denied to them. This one has been no different.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/25/kadcyla-cancer-drug-too-expensive-nhs