Re:The Danger of Managing Drug Prices
by greeneggs on Saturday September 12, 2015 @04:37PM
(#10209275)
There are lots of news stories about this in Britain. A couple examples from 2015:
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21640343-well-meaning-...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3106130/Ovarian-ca...
Re:The Danger of Managing Drug Prices
by ZeroGravitas on Saturday September 12, 2015 @07:03PM
(#10209689)
Notably, the first article is arguing that the evaluation of medical effectiveness (or as they say in the USA, "death panels") is a good thing.
Re:The Danger of Managing Drug Prices
by fredkbloggs on Saturday September 12, 2015 @06:38PM
(#10209635)
Others have provided examples; I was actually making the opposite point with respect to the US. "Death panels" was a phrase used by politicians to drum up hysteria around a hypothetical single-payer system refusing to pay for a treatment. My contention is that such hysteria would make it nearly impossible, politically, for a US single-payer system to refuse to pay for any treatment, no matter how expensive or ineffective. This would of course drive up demand and therefore prices even moreso than the already distorted third-party payer system that exists today.
The sad thing that everyone missed is, insurers already do this. Death panels exist, they're built into our current dumb not-really-free-market solution!
Look at the recent decision by the UK's cancer fund to stop paying for a bunch of cancer drugs, including ones like Kadcyla which dramatically extends life in metastatic breast cancer.
Can you elaborate on this? Do you have any examples of death panels in countries with socialized medicine? Or at least of the government refusing to pay for medicine?