Death panels in the UK: Liver cancer drug rejected
Via the BBC.
A drug that can prolong the lives of patients with advanced liver cancer has been rejected for use in the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.That's right, socialized medicine in the UK has led to a literal death panel. And those affected by it, like Kate Spall, whose mom's life was prolonged by the drug, are furious.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) said the cost of Nexavar - about £3,000 a month - was "simply too high".
But Macmillan Cancer Support said the decision was "a scandal".
More than 3,000 people are diagnosed with liver cancer every year in the UK and their prognosis is generally poor.
Only about 20% of patients are alive one year after diagnosis, dropping to just 5% after five years.
"The psychological feeling when a group of people decide that you cannot have a treatment that can help you is really devastating."Socialized medicine = death panel. There's just no other option when you run out of other people's money.
There's no doubt this drug works well, but bureaucrats based their decision solely on the drug's cost.
Cancer Research UK's chief clinician Peter Johnson said the decision was "enormously frustrating" because there was no doubt about the drug's effectiveness.As the Senate considers a health care bill that will lead to socialized medicine, Americans need to look at places where there already is socialized medicine and ask themselves if they want to put our medical decisions in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats.
He said: "There's no alternative treatment and there are no other places for people to go. It is expensive, but the only issue is cost and the number of patients affected are quite few - there's probably only six or seven hundred patients a year."
