Comparative Effectiveness Abroad
We have previously warned about this here, here and here. This is Virginia Postrel. Full article is worth reading.
- Private infusion clinics have been springing up all over Canada, offering cancer drugs to patients who either can pay themselves or have private health insurance, usually through an employer, that will cover the cost.
- In the U.K., some regional authorities threatened to exclude patients from all NHS coverage if they pay private providers for pricey cancer drugs.
- Until July 2007, New Zealand wouldn’t fund the anticancer drug Herceptin for early-stage breast cancer…. To pay for treatments, women who could do so have mortgaged their homes, dipped into their retirement savings and held fundraisers among their neighbors. Many have cut their treatments short to save money.
I suppose the thinking at NHS is that you don’t deserve future care if you’re supposed to be dead.
At least we know the effects of this Obama administration poicy are not benign.
Daschle pointed to Britain as the model for this idea. Currently, the Obama people aren’t saying a word about Britain.
The NHS trusts didn’t just “threaten” to deny care to patients who paid privately for advanced drugs, they actually did it. Finally someone went public and beat the policy back.
The arguments were fairness ones as in “Co-payments would risk creating a two-tier health service and be in direct contravention with the principles and values of the NHS” which, as we all know, are so NICE.
Links at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3056691.ece and http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/05/alan-johnson-nhs-nice-reforms.