One More Reason to VOTE Tomorrow

[Engineer]

NICE To Be Stripped Of Powers To Make Drug Decisions For NHS.
The Daily Mail (UK) (11/1, Martin) reports, "The scandal of patients being denied drugs just because the NHS rationing body decides they are too expensive will end, ministers have declared." The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence "will be stripped of its powers to ban drugs on the Health Service," and "the current arbitrary limit on the cost of new drugs -- around £30,000 per year of extended high-quality life -- will be scrapped from 2014." The Department of Health also "says that NICE would no longer be 'acting as an arbiter on the availability of drugs', with GPs instead deciding what the NHS could afford."

NICE is the UK governmental equivalent of HHS/Medicare which heretofore has had the authority to ban drugs and other therapies not because they are ineffective or unsafe, but because the NICE calculations indicate that for the UK as a whole, the drugs are not economic.... Like in the US, the UK has one agency (MHRA) that approves drugs as "Safe & Effective", the equivalent of our FDA, and then NICE which determines which of the approved drugs can be used by doctors and hospitals.

This same approach is embedded within Obamacare - It's notihing short of rationing and strips the key decision on medical care away from the Physician & Patient and gives it to a bunch of .gov bureaucrats.

It's awfully ironic that supporters of Obamacare are using this UK as a model just as the UK is dismantling key elements of their troubled system.

While overturning Obamacare would take veto proof majoities in both House & Sentate (Unrealistic) - we can vote for the candidates that will defund the project and let it die on the vinew. SO Get Out & Vote !

 

[FreeWillie]

Obamacare will simply be defunded and die on the vine when the Repubs take control of the House. It won't be repealed but it will be modified.

You should not need a reason to vote. It's a duty that every citizen must exercise. PERIOD!

 

[bullseye]

We need to scrap the .gov altogether and start anew, never mind Obamacare.

 

[Len-2A Training]

You should not need a reason to vote. It's a duty that every citizen must exercise. PERIOD!

Absolutely true! I've only missed one election since I became eligible to vote and it still bothers me to this day. It was in the late 1970s and I got called to go on a job interview in Upstate NY at the last minute and back then you had to file for an absentee ballot a couple weeks in advance and I didn't have the time to do this. It was only a local election (town only) but I've always taken this responsibility seriously.

 

[s4mt3k]

Seeing how I'm traveling, I stopped by the town hall on Fri and voted. Hope we can make a difference this time around.

 

[Pilgrim]

Not much different here in the US now.

I take a certain med at levels 2x the normal dose.

My insurance company says there are other drugs available - cheaper- that will do the same thing...not generics...different compounds.

They don't work for me...they actually make me very sick.

InsCo says they'll pay for one dose/day but not 2. A regular one dose 30 supply without ins is $300. So I'd have to pay for my medical insurance every month to get one dose from them and an additional $300 for the extra dose. Screw them.

I go to the VA. They tell me that they only prescribe the same as the insco will pay for. Since it's for a service connected condition, I had to fight thru an appeals process where they finally agreed to give me what I needed.

So insco won't give people what they need and the VA (gov't) won't either (in some cases).

Not much different here than in the UK, now.