Cancer Drugs Fund 2.0: a missed opportunity?

PharmacoEconomics

14 June 2016 - The UK National Health Service, like most other developed health care systems, has struggled with how to address the financial challenge created by the steady stream of increasingly expensive cancer treatments receiving regulatory approval.

In the first decade of this century, the UK NICE Technology Appraisal process was used to identify those that were likely to represent good value at the manufacturer’s asking price, to negotiate price discounts where possible, and to explain withholding of funding when negotiations failed. During the 2010 election campaign, the future Prime Minister, David Cameron, promised to create a Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) to pay for those drugs for which NICE gave a negative recommendation. 

In November 2015, the UK Department of Health proposed a completely new CDF. The new CDF will be based within NICE and use the same technology appraisal methods that NICE has implemented successfully for over 15 years. Reading the consultation document it appears that the new fund has been defined to achieve three things: (a) increase the likelihood that promising new cancer drugs will be provided to NHS patients; (b) generate ‘real world’ evidence on cancer drugs’ effectiveness and cost effectiveness; and (c) operate within its allocated budget. 

We briefly summarize the key features of the revised CDF, before explaining how the revised scheme will continue to damage the health of UK citizens. We then describe how, with some simple amendments to the proposed framework, the revised CDF could maximize the value of the benefit to cancer patients and hence minimize its negative impact on the efficiency and equity of the NHS.

For more details, go to: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40273-016-0403-2/fulltext.html?wt_mc=alerts.TOCjournals

Michael Wonder

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Michael Wonder