Where President Obama Got His Moustache

November 20, 2009 (LPAC)—The British public healthcare system — used as a model for the healthcare reforms promoted by the Obama Administration and the leadership of the Democratic Party — has again provided a chilling pause for Americans contemplating the proposed new health system.

An article in the British Independent newspaper reported today, that people with advanced liver cancer will be denied a new drug by the National Health Service under a draft guidance published today. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) said the price being charged by pharmaceutical firm Bayer for the medicine was "simply too high". (NICE is the model in the U.S. for the proposed unelected Medicare-budgeting commission IMAC, which has been demanded by the President and his advisors, and is contained in the Senate bill now under consideration.) The Independent reports that treatment with the drug, Nexavar (also called sorafenib), doesn't cure, but can extend life for six months, costing £36,000 a year per patient.

Andrew Dillon, chief executive of NICE, was quoted by the Independent: "We were disappointed not to have been able to recommend the use of sorafenib but after carefully considering all the evidence, including the proposed patient access scheme in which the manufacturer offered to provide every fourth pack free, sorafenib does not provide enough benefit to patients to justify its high cost. We have recently changed our approach to appraising high cost treatments which can extend life for terminally ill patients. This has meant that more of them are now being recommended. We looked at sorafenib in just the same way but the price being asked by Bayer is simply too high to justify using NHS money which could be spent on better value cancer treatments."

Meanwhile, Britain's The Telegraph reported on an aspect of the British Government's plans to deal with the swine flu epidemic, which has recently increased there. The Telegraph reported that health experts had originally predicted 65,000 deaths, but reduced that figure in September to 19,000. Nonetheless, the Home Office has "drawn up detailed figures of how the country would cope with large numbers of dead. It reports that a Home Office document raises the prospect of mass graves being dug in inner-city areas where there could be insufficient cemetery plots, crematoria would have to run seven days a week, and funeral services would have to be shortened. Further, "In its latest newsletter, the Association of Burial Authorities discloses that the Government has asked coffin makers to calculate their spare capacity." Home Office Minister Lord West has discussed plans with the head of an MPs' funeral group. A representative of the group is quoted, "The Government has been preparing for the possibility of an influenza pandemic for a number of years and we are among the most prepared countries in the world."

An American would think you'd prepare for a flu epidemic with doctors and hospitals, not mass graves and crematoria.