SICK & TWISTED NHS

Health service PAYS to block life-saving drugs for desperate patients

OUTRAGED - Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb
OUTRAGED - Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb

22/11/2009

NHS bosses have secretly splashed out £1million of taxpayers' money - to STOP desperate patients getting life-saving drugs.

Bean-counters from Primary Care Trusts, which pay for treatments, have spent cash that could have been spent on health care to set up and run a pressure group to campaign AGAINST expensive new remedies.

They have formed the Commissioning Support Appraisal Service to put pressure on NICE, the body that decides which new drugs can be used by the NHS.

It is understood that CSAS helped persuade NICE to reject life-extending liver cancer drug Nexavar last week.

Now angry doctors and politicians are calling for the Department of Health to intervene.

Lib-Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb said: "It is outrageous that one public body is spending taxpayers' cash to block the work of another NHS body so patients can't get treatments."

And leading cancer expert Prof Karol Sikora said: "If PCTs don't have enough money they should be lobbying ministers to give them more, not interfering in this way. It's not fair to patients."

But last night the man behind the plan was unrepentant. Andrew Donald, chief operating officer of Birmingham East and North PCT said: "We want to make it clear to NICE that there's a cost every time it says Yes to the latest cancer treatment."

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This article has 3 comments

This Beggars belief , but it has been going on for a long time , but to spend a Million pounds , to block sick people getting what they need is pure evil , what century do we live in , we are very quickly slipping back into stone age , and the idiots trying to run the system , have the brain of a stone age man , God Forgive them all those people , who worked hard all their lives , fought for their country , just left to die , and many more .

By margaret.. Posted November 22 2009 at 9:26 AM.

Contrast this with the leaders of the EU (£40,000,000 per day) arriving in their luxury cars for an evening of fine dining at our expense while they stitched up an undemocratic deal over who is to be president of the EU.

By Kevin.. Posted November 22 2009 at 3:36 AM.

Andrew Donald - seems to me that the cost is higher refusing the treatment than giving it.

I'm disgusted that people who are entitled to have medical care just don't get it. Or have to wait months for what they need. And yet we have people coming from other countries and are given what they want when not paid anything into the system here.

Great Britain it isn't. That is unless you a criminal, fake asylum seeker or a flipping politician.

By Gillian.. Posted November 21 2009 at 9:57 PM.

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