Asda. Cancer drugs at cost price.

[catherinecherub]

Read through this and see what you think.

In my opinion, Asda are doing a service but what about the people who cannot even afford the reduced prices and why the discrepancies between different outlets?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_a ... 132076.ece

Perhaps as well as petitioning the government, about providing test strips, who will probably say it is a clinical decision, we should ask Asda about selling them to us at cost price. :idea:

 

[cugila]

Mike Hobday, head of campaigns and policy at the charity Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “[This is] good news for people who can afford to buy cancer drugs privately but for the majority of cancer patients this simply isn’t an option.

“We believe clinically effective drugs must be available to everyone on the NHS and not just to those who can afford to pay privately.

“The £200million cancer drugs fund, included in [today’s] coalition agreement, may go some way to ensuring fairer access to cancer treatments but wider reform is also needed to enable all patients to get the drugs their doctor recommends.”

This is something very close to my Heart, as I am a Cancer Patient, in remission at present thanks to the wonderful care and expensive treatment's I received at the hands of the NHS.

It makes my blood boil when I think how the Government can spend Billions bailing out Banks who got themselves into trouble and yet, to extend a life, to make someones quality of life better during that time they cannot put MUCH larger sums of money into a fund to cover these eventualities.

What price a life........ask the 'bean counters' and the MP's. What would they want if it was one of their loved ones that needed these drugs ? I am sure I know what the answer would be !

I cannot afford any of those drugs if I were to need them. So, I would be sentenced to death by that policy. It has to change. It has to have compassion built in. This is peoples lives we are talking about.

Drug companies have a hand to play in this too......too much profit, too little thought that peoples lives could be made better. I hope that those companies will make LARGE donations to the fund.

Maybe I am expecting too much from them, I am just a human being after all.......

Ken

 

[phoenix]

Read through this and see what you think.


Perhaps as well as petitioning the government, about providing test strips, who will probably say it is a clinical decision, we should ask Asda about selling them to us at cost price. :idea:

A very good idea,
In the US Walmart (who own Asda) market the Relion meter and strips. The strips cost $39 for 100 compared with over $100 for most other brands.
Unfortunately it couldn't be a direct import since it will be in mg/dl.

Edit to add, Here, ie in France, there is now a 50c extra charge on each prescription item, and 2E for hospital transportation (up to a maximum of 50E). Only the under 18s, pregnant women and the very poor are exempt ie I pay the franchises but nothing more for my diabetes supplies. This money is specifically for expensive cancer treatments, alzheimers and palliative care

 

[Synonym]

Drug companies have a hand to play in this too......too much profit, too little thought that peoples lives could be made better. I hope that those companies will make LARGE donations to the fund.

Maybe I am expecting too much from them, I am just a human being after all.......

Ken

Drug companies have THE hand to play in this since they are the ones who set the prices which must be based on GREED since they are consistently so high. :evil:

There must be some way that people could band together to pressure for 'compassion in pricing' :?: :idea:

 

[HLW]

Drugs companies do not exist to help people. They do not exist to provide people with drugs. They are not charities. They exist to make money. That is their purpose, their reason for being. So of course they will charge as much as they can. Hopefully with drugs like this that the NHS will not provide, the drugs companies will reduce the price (so they will sell more for less per unit, but will still make money).

cugila 'what price a life?' - £30,000-40,000ish per year (for drugs) of perfect health says NICE:
http://www.city.ac.uk/economics/dps/dis ... s/0301.pdf
http://www.nice.org.uk/newsroom/feature ... heqaly.jsp
The NHS does not have endless money. They have to choose.

I don't know how it works in the NHS. I work for Network Rail. They set a price on life. They also have to choose. They do not have endless money. They fail to prevent people killing themselves sometimes (people jumping in front of trains, driving in front of trains, falling down stairs, falling off scaffolding, not using equipment properly). It's £millions per life, but it's not unlimited. By replacing all level crossing with bridges, lives would be saved. There is not enough money to do this everywhere. So people are 'needlessly' dying, because the money isn't being spent to save them. Because the money is not there. Everyone wishes that all these needless deaths could be prevented, but they can not be. There is not the money.

 

[cugila]

And your point is ?

 

[Anonymous]

I don't know how it works in the NHS. I work for Network Rail. They set a price on life. They also have to choose. They do not have endless money. They fail to prevent people killing themselves sometimes (people jumping in front of trains, driving in front of trains, falling down stairs, falling off scaffolding, not using equipment properly). It's £millions per life, but it's not unlimited. By replacing all level crossing with bridges, lives would be saved. There is not enough money to do this everywhere. So people are 'needlessly' dying, because the money isn't being spent to save them. Because the money is not there. Everyone wishes that all these needless deaths could be prevented, but they can not be. There is not the money.

There is a flaw in your comparison above. No one chooses to have cancer. The people who choose to jump or drive in front of trains or run across level crossings are making a choice with their lives. Cancer patients do not have that choice when they are denied the life saving drugs because someone decides that that drug is not cost effective.
You have missed the point. The government is ONLY putting £200,000,000 into the cancer drugs fund yet they can find billions to bail out banks. As always money is more important than lives.

 

[HLW]

And your point is ?

Just that I don't think anyone wants people to die sooner of cancer, the NHS just doesn't have the money. They would have to choose to not treat someone else to have the money to fund these drugs. NICE have to set a price on life, what else could they do?

 

[HLW]

There is a flaw in your comparison above. No one chooses to have cancer. The people who choose to jump or drive in front of trains or run across level crossings are making a choice with their lives. Cancer patients do not have that choice when they are denied the life saving drugs because someone decides that that drug is not cost effective.

People choose to be pushed in front of trains by other people? People choose to trip and fall? Children choose to be in cars driven in front of trains? People choose to be in train that hit cars on level crossings? Usually it is idiots doing stupid things, yes, but not always.

You have missed the point. The government is ONLY putting £200,000,000 into the cancer drugs fund yet they can find billions to bail out banks. As always money is more important than lives.

I can't comment, I don't understand the banking system well enough. I would have thought the banks collapsing would be quite bad though. And cause deaths - poverty, stress, suicide.
Anyway, everything I'd read says the problem with these drugs is not just the price, it is that they are not often effective, and that when they are they just cause a few more months of pain-filled life?

 

[cugila]

This isn't NICE we are talking about this is the Government who decided that was all the money they were going to put into the Cancer Fund........it is just a drop in the ocean. They can and should do more. The Health Minister dictates what NICE and the PCT's do, it is not their decision. They are told what to do.

It is that sort of attitude that is too prevelant today....."oh well, we haven't got the money so they will have to die." Is that what you agree with ? I certainly dont. I value my fellow human beings. I would give all I had to save a life. This government doesn't have to do that it just needs to fund the care for Cancer Patients properly and fairly. They find money for all sorts of 'far out' causes.

I am not interested in the actual pricing that NICE uses to evaluate cost effectiveness. I have read most of the NICE guidelines over the last 12 months, I can quote some verbatim. I am not interested in the cost to Network Rail. I am just interested in getting better funding for people who as Silver Fox says, do not have a choice !

I'm not interested in somebody telling me WHY they won't do it......I want to hear how they CAN do it, add extra funding. I don't need to hear from accountant's, I need to hear from positive thinkers ! Like myself.

 

[Anonymous]

HLW, yes these drugs cost a lot of money but to the person who is dying of cancer and just wants a few more months of life with their loved ones, what price then ?
I hope you are never in the situation to watch a loved one die slowly knowing that there is a drug that could ease that suffering and give that person dignity in death and some more time on this Earth. We only get one chance at life.

 

[Dippy3103]

I do understand that the drug companies are businesses like any other. However, I do find it hugly distastful that their greed is, ultimatly, costing lives. This applies to many things, including cancer drugs and test strips.
There is also the issue of the huge amount of waste throughout the public sector and this certainly includes the nhs. Maybe the money wasted could go to save lives.
I know it won't completly solve the problem, but it makes my blood boil thatvon the one hand people are being denied vital drugs, yet money is being spent on things like leadership surveys to see if hitler was perceived as a "cool" leader.
I fear I may start to rant.......

 

[Dippy3103]

Asada have clearly started something. There is a story on the Oxford Mail website saying that local Sainsbury's are selling various drugs at cost.
Given the difference in price between Asda's cost price and places like Boots, it is plain the drug companies are still making a healthy profit. The price of the drug is still way out of the price range of the vast majority of people.

 

[catherinecherub]

Let's hope we have a price war. It may well result in some changes in prices for all drugs.

This postcode lottery with cancer drugs really needs some expose and public opinion. Having nursed and watched someone deteriorate rapidly with cancer, I feel for all those people who cannot afford the necessary drugs that would improve their quality of life and give them a bit longer with their loved ones. Imagine how many signatures a petition of this sort would raise.

The comparison between cancers and suicides and accidents that has been put forward doen't really stand up to scrutiny. What price a human life ?