You may be under the impression that this question is hard if not impossible to answer, and that each individual should be the ultimate judge of his life’s worth. If you’re unlucky enough to live in the U.K., however, your life is priced out by NHS apparatchiks:
NICE [National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence] has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life.
In other words, if it costs more than $22,750 to keep you alive, you’re toast. The NYT story to which I have linked above tells the story of Bruce Hardy, from whom cancer treatment is being withheld by the soulless bureaucrats of the NHS. But what if Mr. Hardy were an American?
If the Hardys lived in the United States … Mr. Hardy would most likely get the drug, although he might have to pay part of the cost.
What the author of the story doesn’t seem to understand is that Mr. Hardy has already paid for his health care via taxes extracted from a lifetime of paychecks. Under the socialized system of Great Britain, however, he has no say in how the NHS spends his money.
This is government-run health care, folks. Do you want your fate decided by some anonymous drone tucked away in some labyrinthine bureaucracy? No? Well, you’re going to get just that if you keep voting for politicians who want to “fix” health care by increasing the government’s role.
[ht Kevin,MD]
Comments 1
Hey - the hat tip should be for me, as I referred to the NYT item in an earlier thread. Just to make your item clear, we are talking about possible weeks or months of often very poor quality life gained at the vast expense of marginally effective drugs; that the NICE model is pioneering and being adopted by other countries; and that your own cancer doctors are having more conversations with patients about quality of life and often wipe-outs of family savings. And as the NYT item makes clear, the NICE approach is forcing down drug prices, and:
‘… the idea of using price to determine which drugs or devices Medicare or Medicaid provides has provoked fierce protests. But Dr. McClellan said the American government would soon have no choice.’
Posted 07 Dec 2008 at 4:47 pm ¶Post a Comment