Money or Your Life? Brits Weigh Drug Cost Vs. Benefit

A British government institute that approves drugs based on cost-benefit analysis is coming under fire at home even as other countries are seeing it as a model for bringing down costs, the New York Times reports. Though the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence often balks at expensive life-prolonging medications—denying one cancer patient a $54000 treatment that would have given him six months—some see it “as the only workable paradigm” of US reform.

In a world of skyrocketing medical costs, many think the reasoned approach to drug approval is necessary. But Britain presents a special case, as the government-run health system means the expensive drugs in question are not available at all, unlike the US. Advocates say artificially high drug prices, and not the system, are to blame.
(More Britain stories.)