According to a report in today’s Guardian, the ban on drugs that can give kidney cancer patients many months of extra life is to be lifted. At least two, and possibly all four, of the medicines that had previously been deemed too expensive to prescribe will be approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) early next year.
What caused the the reversal? Why evidence, of course.
"A spokeswoman for NICE said the organization was looking again at all the drugs because there was more evidence submitted during a couple of periods of the appraisal process by manufacturers, which needs to be discussed by the [appraisal] committee. We will publish a next draft within four weeks of the committee's meeting in January and issue final guidance in March 2009.”
Couldn't have been anything else, right? Well ...
"The move follows British Health Secretary Alan Johnson's decision this month to overhaul the way new medicines are assessed for terminally ill patients. Denying cancer patients access to drugs that are widely available abroad has become a major political issue."
For more on this issue, see here.
And for the complete Guardian article, see here.
Perhaps HHS Secretary/Healthcare Czar-Designate Daschle should give the Honorable Mr. Johnson a call. And maybe he should conference-in Senator Baucus.
