Value-based healthcare

The UK government, with its nationalized healthcare program, plans to save money by rationalizing the cost of drugs.  The UK wants to establish the value of drug treatments, based on their cost-effectiveness. If a drug's benefit doesn't outweigh its cost to the payer (the government), doctors will not be allowed to prescribe the drug.

How does the UK government intend to measure a drug's value to the patient?  According to a Reuters article, the patient's quality of life gained must exceed the drug's cost:

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) bases its assessments on "quality-adjusted life years", or QALYs, which measure a person's state of health. One QALY equals one year of perfect health, two years of half-perfect health or four years of one-quarter perfect health. As a rule of thumb, NICE reckons medicines costing more than 30,000 pounds per QALY are too expensive, though it does make exceptions.

Pharmaceutical companies can either accept the way NICE values their drugs, or fight back. Pfizer has protested NICE's recommendation that its Aricept and similar drugs be prescribed only for patients with significant symptoms of dementia.  Bristol-Myers Squibb's rheumatoid arthritis drug Orencia was knocked back by NICE as too costly.

Since the U.S. is quickly moving to a form of nationalized healthcare, it's an instructive debate.  Soon, we too will be debating the merits of drug QALY's and value-based healthcare.

Comments

[Halim]

thats for sure, bro

[lburgler]

hey Barry. i bet you that in 10 years we STILL don't have universal healthcare AND we've slashed medi- benefits

50 bucks