Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11513

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Messori A.
PPRS is not NICE
BMJ 2007 Sep 22; 335:(7620):578
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/335/7620/578-b?etoc

Abstract:

Some of Burnand’s comments on Iheanacho’s article are astonishing.1 If the mission of any national health system is maximising health, this mission is pursued by assuming that spending on a drug buys not the milligrams of the active substance but the clinical benefit resulting from it. From an ethical point of view, it is bad to use systems not based on clinical benefit (such as the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme, PPRS).

Outside the UK, many people consider the work done by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the area of value for money to be an extraordinary example of ethical progress. At last, there is a rationale to support the reimbursement of expensive innovative agents (for example, adjuvant trastuzumab for early breast cancer), as well as a rationale to explain why the reimbursement of poorly innovative agents is subjected to restrictions (such as anti-Alzheimer drugs).

Drug . . .

andreamessori@interfree.it