DR RICHARD TAYLOR MP
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SW1A 0AA
7 August 2008
Dear Sir
The decision to reject state funding for four anti-cancer drugs
by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Kidney
cancer drugs judged too costly for 3,000 NHS patients, August 7) has
been greeted with understandable dismay but misplaced opprobrium.
Nice is the government's only attempt at healthcare rationing and
has won international praise for its work. Unfortunately, through no
fault of Nice, this rationing may hit entirely the wrong people,
those with very severe illnesses for whom new but expensive
treatments offer benefit.
The government appears to be unwilling to allow a public debate
about wider health care rationing. Surely most people would agree if
certain treatments of marginal or cosmetic benefit were removed from
state funding. Surely clinicians would agree that where
evidence-based protocols exist for the best (and cheapest) treatment
regimes for specific conditions they should be followed without
feeling that their clinical freedom is under attack.
By effective, evidence-based, publicly supported healthcare
rationing state funds could be liberated to enable Nice to raise its
cost effectiveness threshold and thus allow NHS patients to have
access to drugs like sunitinib that have been denied to two of my
constituents recently.
Yours faithfully
Richard T Taylor
Independent MP for Wyre Forest.
The Editor, The Guardian by e-mail to letters@guardian.co.uk
