Terminal cancer patient refused treatment

[jessica]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080904/tuk-high...
Discuss!!!!!!
NOT exceptional enough.
Sounds like a monty python sketch to me.
Good luck to the bloke i hope he wins. Afterall he has a lot to lose if he doesnt.
lets not waste taxpayers money on the sick.
lets pay for council employees to go on jaunts etc.
This country is a disgrace. no wonder it's just called Britain.
It used to be great you know.

[kambites]

Unfortunately, the NHS, like any other "business", has to spend its money where it can get most from it... maybe the NHS should have more money and/or be run more efficiently but that's a different discussion. It may well be a choice between extending the life of one person by 3 years, or the lives of several other people by more.

Also by "is readily available to patients across Europe and the US", they mean, in many cases, that he'd be free to pay for it himself which he probably is here too.

ETA: It also says "could extend his life by up to three years". It's quite possible from that news article that it only has a 1% chance of doing anything in his case and that even if it helps, it'll probably only keep him alive a week longer...

Edited by kambites on Thursday 4th September 09:21

[stackmonkey]

kambites said:

Unfortunately, the NHS, like any other "business", has to spend its money where it can get most from it... maybe the NHS should have more money and/or be run more efficiently but that's a different discussion. It may well be a choice between extending the life of one person by 3 years, or the lives of several other people by more.

Also by "is readily available to patients across Europe and the US", they mean, in many cases, that he'd be free to pay for it himself which he probably is here too.

ETA: It also says "could extend his life by up to three years". It's quite possible from that news article that it only has a 1% chance of doing anything in his case and that even if it helps, it'll probably only keep him alive a week longer...

Edited by kambites on Thursday 4th September 09:21

All reasonable but ultimately irrelevant.
If someone having only 2 months left to left live is not exceptional enough, what exactly DOES count as exceptional??

[kambites]

stackmonkey said:

If someone having only 2 months left to left live is not exceptional enough, what exactly DOES count as exceptional??

Maybe only having two months left to live and there being a significant chance that the drug will work? We don't know enough from the article to know.

I'm not saying it's right that he can't get the drug. I'm saying that with that kind of crappy sensationalist journalism, we don't know.

Edited by kambites on Thursday 4th September 09:27

[IforB]

Hmm. These are usually complex cases with a whole lot more going on than we get to read about, but if his Doc's are pushing for it and it's just the PCT saying no, then that isn't on.

There is no excuse for the shambles of the "postcode lottery" that occurs in the NHS. It is simply wrong. I agree that sometimes there is a cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done on certain treatments since many drugs are frighteningly expensive and whilst it would be nice to live in a utopia where we can get every drug known to man for free through the NHS, but it just can't work that way without bankrupting us all.

But, just because you live in postcode X doesn't mean that you should get a different treatment from someone in postcode Y.

Unfortunately for this poor chap, I think it will be be all over before the court case goes through. If he's only got a couple of months left according to the docs, then it is a race against time to get this drug into him and we all know how long court cases take to resolve.

[Ben Magoo]

I wonder how you tell someone that their life is not cost effective?

Great Britain Plc - The most miss managed company in the wold.

[rich1231]

jessica said:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080904/tuk-high...
Discuss!!!!!!
NOT exceptional enough.
Sounds like a monty python sketch to me.
Good luck to the bloke i hope he wins. Afterall he has a lot to lose if he doesnt.
lets not waste taxpayers money on the sick.
lets pay for council employees to go on jaunts etc.
This country is a disgrace. no wonder it's just called Britain.
It used to be great you know.

Jessica,

you in your posts perpetually assume that there is some bottomless pit of money to be used by any possible "Worthy" cause. It's simply not viable to see things that way.

[Swilly]

If he isnt getting the drug, then he should do.

What, if not for this, do we struggle everyday for, pay taxes for and generally strive for ?

[kambites]

Ben Magoo said:

I wonder how you tell someone that their life is not cost effective?

I don't know, but unfortunately it's sometimes necessary.

[Fittster]

jessica said:

It used to be great you know.

When and how are you determine greatness?

[kambites]

You do know that the "Great" in "Great Britain" refers to the fact that it's the biggest of the British Isles, don't you?

I don't think the Labour government has managed to break that (yet).

Edited by kambites on Thursday 4th September 09:34

[rustyspit]

stackmonkey said:

All reasonable but ultimately irrelevant.
If someone having only 2 months left to left live is not exceptional enough, what exactly DOES count as exceptional??

Unfortunately I doubt whether it is exceptional at all - there are probably hundreds if not thousands of people with only a couple months left to live, many of whose life-expectancy might or might not be enhanced by a wonder-drug.

Ben Magoo said:

I wonder how you tell someone that their life is not cost effective?

Just one more reason to be glad I chose not to study medicine.

Edited by rustyspit on Thursday 4th September 09:36

[rustyspit]

Swilly said:

If he isnt getting the drug, then he should do.

What, if not for this, do we struggle everyday for, pay taxes for and generally strive for ?

Dunno, you tell us?
Is it more important to pay for this, or a heart transplant, or pensions, or chaemotherapy, or roads, or the military, or something else? As I understand it, this is one of the reasons why NICE exists - to determine which treatments are a good 'investment'.

This is an important debate, but not one that any government seems to be politically able to have.

Edited by rustyspit on Thursday 4th September 09:41

[Ozzie Osmond]

Question.

Let's say Mr X has a terminal disease and, left untreated, will die tomorrow.

There's a new wonder-treatment which can keep him alive for an additional 24 hours but it's going to be expensive. How much are you willing to pay?

£1,000?

£10,000?

Sell the house?

[BigLepton]

jessica said:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080904/tuk-high...
Discuss!!!!!!
NOT exceptional enough.
Sounds like a monty python sketch to me.
Good luck to the bloke i hope he wins. Afterall he has a lot to lose if he doesnt.
lets not waste taxpayers money on the sick.
lets pay for council employees to go on jaunts etc.
This country is a disgrace. no wonder it's just called Britain.
It used to be great you know.

I couldn't disagree with you more.

When Britain used to be 'Great' people relied on themselves and if they needed expensive drugs they had to buy them. Now people expect everything to be provided for them since medicine was socialised by Labour. The drugs are available in the US and many EU countries but in America you pay for them yourself or your expensive private health insurance does. In Europe they pay a lot more tax to run their healthcare systems and thus get these drugs. Here, no-one will vote for more tax to pay for things like this, but expect them nonetheless. You can't have it both ways. If I was him, I'd think less about the courts and more about trying to fund the drugs himself.

[staceyb]

Ben Magoo said:

I wonder how you tell someone that their life is not cost effective?

Great Britain Plc - The most miss managed company in the wold.

But that's the thing, he is a terminal patient all the drug is going to is prolong his life and no one knows for how long.

[rustyspit]

BigLepton said:

If I was him, I'd think less about the courts and more about trying to fund the drugs himself.

To be fair to him without knowing the circumstances, he may have decided that this is the most likely way to raise the necessary funds. It must be quite difficult to raise $200,000+ in an instant if you have no assets (maybe he rents, so doesn't have a house to sell), and aren't able to get a loan due to short life expectancy.

[AJI]

We also have an expensive 'private' insurance scheme here in britain... it is taken off our salary every month as NHS tax.

I mean, our country boasts to the world about our NHS system and how everyone is entitled to free health care..... but in reality it is all a front.


If the money was spent correctly and all of the NHS contributions from each working individual was put towards the NHS, then we would have a system that works and people could have access to the drugs they need.

[rustyspit]

AJI said:

We also have an expensive 'private' insurance scheme here in britain... it is taken off our salary every month as NHS tax.

I mean, our country boasts to the world about our NHS system and how everyone is entitled to free health care..... but in reality it is all a front.


If the money was spent correctly and all of the NHS contributions from each working individual was put towards the NHS, then we would have a system that works and people could have access to the drugs they need.

Easy to say of course, but not so easy to implement.

As long as healthcare is regarded as 'free', the demand for it will be completely inexhaustable. Every day someone has to draw the line somewhere, just be glad that it isn't you.

There will always be another deserving case, or a new technology that needs funding for research. There will always be new drugs that offer a chance of helping someone, do we pay for them all - at what price?

Would you offer free cosmetic surgery to everyone who wanted it? Probably not, but what about for children with congenital deformities? How deformed does a child have to be before they deserve surgery? Do we pin back bat ears, but not offer surgery to people with big noses, etc?...

[kambites]

AJI said:

If the money was spent correctly and all of the NHS contributions from each working individual was put towards the NHS, then we would have a system that works and people could have access to the drugs they need.

There can never be "enough" money in the NHS. There are always more and more expensive things that you can try when conventional treatments don't work.