A family member has had immunotherapy on the NHS and it was disclosed to them (not sure how reliable or accurate this is) that a single dose cost the NHS 4 figures. It needed several layers of approval for it to be administered.

For one of the same drugs discussed above by Traubenfuchs? If so, unless I've misread the discussion, that looks like 12-140 times cheaper depending on which drug and exactly where in the 1000-9999 GPB it was?

Prices in earlier comment are per year, prices the NHS paid were per dose. Do we know how many doses per year?

Indeed it was per dose, and IIRC the figure was over £5000. It wasn’t intended to be public knowledge, I don’t think the patient was supposed to be shown it. The various supporting chemos ranged from below £100 to about £250/dose IIRC.

I mention it because in the UK people don’t really understand that drugs can be really expensive. The assumption is that due to the scale of the NHS they’re heavily discounted or even free, and that the high prices mentioned by US folk is due to the unusual healthcare situation there.

But there’s real money being paid by taxes, as well as procedures that determine whether you’re worth the expenditure.

I'm sure some (many) make that kind of mistake, so it is worth pointing out.

But also:

> and that the high prices mentioned by US folk is due to the unusual healthcare situation there.

Are they wrong? I keep hearing that the US government spends more per person on healthcare than the UK government, even though the US also has mostly private insurance on top of that and the UK mostly doesn't?

Not wrong at all.

The NHS probably does barter discounts. But consider that a discount of 50% off $150k/yr would be incredible, yet still be a vast amount of money for a single treatment.

>It wasn’t intended to be public knowledge

The price the NHS pays for drugs is published in the BNF.

Thanks! That means I did misread.