Why Rationing Is Not NICE
The Wall Street Journal reports on a preliminary decision made late last week by Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to deny the use of several new drugs used to treat chronic leukemia patients. Here’s how NICE explained its decision: “When we recommend the use of very expensive treatments, we need to be confident that they bring sufficient benefit to justify their cost.” The article goes on to summarize how NICE operates in Britain:
NICE has rejected a number of pricey drugs for cancer and other diseases in the past…Sometimes NICE rejects drugs for all patients with the disease, and sometimes just for patients with a specific form of the disease, where the efficacy doesn’t appear to justify the price. NICE’s decisions often anger patients, their families, and drug companies.
President Obama and Democrats in Congress borrowed from the NICE model when creating the health care law’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, a board of bureaucrat “experts” who will have wide-ranging powers to make binding rulings on Medicare policy. While the President claims his board will help reduce the deficit, the latest decision by NICE in Britain illustrates the likely way such deficit savings will be achieved – as well as the impact on patient care of putting unaccountable bureaucrats, rather than physicians and patients, at the heart of health “reform.”