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How much should we pay for expensive cancer medication?

Geoff Riley

6th September 2014

Many students look at health care spending and rationing decisions when they cover the introductory concepts of opportunity cost, scarcity and the cost benefit principle. In this recent BBC Newnight report, the decisions taken by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) - the organisation that decides whether treatments are cost-effective enough to be purchased for patients by the NHS. Cancer drugs especially those that provide targeted medicine for a small patient population can carry a very high unit cost per patient and this is taken many of these drugs above the level that NICE will allow, even though some of these drugs so make a significant difference.Should cancer drugs be taken out of the NICE cost benefit calculation or should drugs companies make more effort to lower their prices?

Geoff Riley

Geoff Riley FRSA has been teaching Economics for over thirty years. He has over twenty years experience as Head of Economics at leading schools. He writes extensively and is a contributor and presenter on CPD conferences in the UK and overseas.

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