Proposed new arrangements for prioritising access to the Cancer Drug Fund “will continue to undermine NICE, duplicate effort and distort allocation of NHS resources, while failing to support the development of cost-effective drugs from which patients will benefit,” says a team of leading health economists.

The proposals put forward by the CDF following its recent consultation include the introduction of a rationing process to prioritise the drugs on its list so that the Fund remains within budget, says the team, from the Office of Health Economics (OHE). “In other words, [the CDF] will do a crude reassessment of the cost-effectiveness of the drug – something that NICE has already assessed and found unacceptable,” they write, in recent editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

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