Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, September 08, 2009 4:08:58 PM
I read an amusing post on
Best of the Web about gridlock in the British NHS concerning new drugs:
Osteoperosis? That's NICE.
"Thousands
of women are being denied better osteoporosis drugs because of
unnecessarily restrictive Government guidelines," London's Daily Mail
reports:
Professor David Reid, an expert on brittle bones, said the
rules are so stringent that GPs are often prevented from giving
alternative treatments to those suffering side-effects from their
pills.
A once-a-year jab that could save thousands from the misery
of broken bones is also not going to be assessed for use on the NHS in
England and Wales for at least three years, according to Professor
Reid, despite being available in Scotland
It means that sufferers are being denied drugs that could
have a major impact on their health and their quality of life. The news
will reignite the debate about the evaluation system used by drugs
rationing body the National Institute for Health and Clinical
Excellence.
NICE has previously been criticised for banning or
restricting breakthrough medicines for conditions such as breast cancer
and Alzheimer's.
Are we really expected to believe that Britain not only is making
old people suffer, but the outfit that makes the decisions is called
NICE? That sounds like something out of a George Orwell fantasy. But as
former Enron adviser Paul Krugman points out, "In Britain, the
government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We've all
heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are
false."
And, yes, we feel rightly superior that our private health care system does not create such situations.
Well, except that it does. thanks to FDA rules, and our limited access to medicines, the very same thing is taking place here, with drugs that could and do work sitting in trials, with people dying or suffering while the government conducts duplicate tests, reproducing results the manufacturers already generated.
As the title says, before you tend to the mote in thy neighbor's eye...
POSTSCRIPT
I made this argument at greater length in "
Medical Regulations" and "
Medical Regulation II", among other posts.