"Wide of mark" UK govt free cancer drug plan

A proposal to exempt cancer drugs from prescription charges, announced by the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, at the ruling Labour Party Conference in Manchester, has been branded as "based on no credible analysis of drug costs over the next few years" by Doctors for Reform and "rather bizarre" by the pharmaceutical industry-funded Office of Health Economics.

In his speech, Mr Brown said: "as over the next few years the [National Health Service] generates cash savings in its drugs budget, we will plow savings back into abolishing charges for all patients with long-term conditions." However, the move comes at a time when the government was considering the problem of patients being excluded oncology products in the NHS, whilst also being prohibited from paying for them without losing state coverage (Marketletters passim).

Christoph Lees, a founder of Doctors for Reform, a group of UK physicians who argue for market-oriented changes to the NHS, told the Marketletter that "Mr Brown still seems to regard it as appropriate that a patient is denied NHS care if he or she buys their own expensive life-saving or life-prolonging drugs - but at the same time waives the cost of prescription painkillers and anti-sickness drugs. Most patients would probably prefer it the other way around."