This just in from the Missouri Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons …
The United Kingdom in the late 1990′s established the National Institute for Health and Clinical Experience (NICE). It was pitched as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used “best practices” in Medicine. What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. [emphasis added] NICE has become the sole gatekeeper that reduces spending by limiting treatments that NHS will provide for 61 million UK citizens.
In 2007, the board restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. The drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then, the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other. As Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, explained at the time: “When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients.”
– adapted (by MoSEPS) from Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2009 “Of NICE and Men” page A14.