Yes Ms Palin, Britain Does Have NHS Death Panels
When Sarah Palin said Obama’s healthcare plan would result in “death panels” that would see bureaucrats making subjective judgements on life and death, she was furiously howled down by Obama supporters.
So how should we describe the expert panel of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which decided that patients will be denied a new cancer drug on the NHS under draft guidelines, because it is too expensive?
Charities are outraged people with advanced liver cancer are to be refused life-extending Nexavar. Andrew Dillon, of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said: “The drug does not provide enough benefit to justify its high cost.”
Andrew Dillon, the CEO of N.I.C.E., is a career bureaucrat, not a doctor or a scientist. He runs the system that says there is a cap of £30,000 per patient for a quality year of life. If the panel determines that a “quality year of life” will cost the NHS more than £30,000, you are dead…
‘Death panel’ conjures up the idea of a panel deciding whether individuals live or die.
NICE decides which drugs the NHS, with it’s finite budget, can afford to provide.
I simply refuse to believe that you a) cannot appreciate that difference and b) cannot see the unfortunate necessity of such budgetary considerations. My only conclusion is that you are being deliberately disingenuous.
But Guido lurrrves Sarah Palin and her medical expertise
What the NHS needs is to hire more exorcists.
That would please Palin no end as her own batshit insane exorcist Pastor Thomas Muthee asks Jesus to fund her political campaigns and protect her from witchcraft
Much cheaper than medical insurance that won’t cover you anyway
Now that’s just good old fashioned conservative common sense.
Given the state of the NHS, witchcraft might be needed.
Its all part of the process soon to go EU wide. That huge defecit isn’t going to pay itself now is it?
The reality is that if a pharmaceutical company is going to be eble to develop new useful drugs it has to be able to invest in its development. The trouble with the QALY criteria is that providing benefits for rare cancers in terms of disease-free progression, overall survival, mean time to progression etc is never going to be approved by NICE because the cost per patient per quality adjusted life year will be high. Unfortunately, there are a lot of rare cancers and diseases which means that treatment is denied from a lot of people.
Bollocks.
Lucentis costs 1000 times more than Avastin, the CEO of the company that developed Lucentis (from Avastin) publicly admitted that the price of Lucentis is not development or production costs, but how much a patient is willing to pay. Avastin is a drug used to treat bowel cancer, Lucentis is used to treat “wet” age-related macular degeneration. Avastin could be used to treat “wet” age-related macular degeneration in this country, but the drug company refuses to put it forward for licencing. Instead they licenced Lucentis (remember 1000 times more expensive than Avastin). NICE approved Lucentis (at £1000 per treatment) on the condition that after 14 treatments the drug company paid the rest. It should not be surprising that few people need as many as 14 treatments.
Angry about this? Well the Conservative health policy document use the Lucentis case as an example of, in their opinion, “best practice” in pricing drugs. You really do not want the Tories to get their hands on the NHS budget.
Bizarre! Someone who actually knows what they are talking about
You sir, are clearly in the wrong place
You need to develop your hysteria skills to blend in with the herd here.Try foaming at the mouth about foriegners, the unemployed, ethnics, the NHS, expenses [but only the correct MPs expenses] or just ranting like a madman about Brown’s lack of an eye……,
But don’t analyse the subject at hand or examine the conservative’s policies whatever you do.It only confuses and infuriates the drones
Unfortunately for Richard Blogger, he’s got his facts wrong.
Lucentis is approximately 7 times the cost of Avastin. I might be an accountant, but even I would suggest that the difference between 7 and 1000 means that he is materially incorrect. (Lucentis £800 and Avastin £120). What other material errors are there in his submission?
Based on about 25,000 new cases of neovascular ARMD a year in the UK, treatment with ranibizumab – Lucentis would cost £300 million a year. Substituting with bevacizumab – Avastin would save £292 million.
Nowt wrong with a bit of witchcraft.
she turned me into a newt! I deselected her
A Qvestion asked in ein SchPirit von pScientifischer Enqviry :
Und wieviel Jahren von QualitätsLeben kostet Herr Andrew Dillon, der CEO von NICE
[How many Years of Quality-Life does Mr Dillon cost at £30,000 per year ???]
Carthago est Delenda
[These Quango-Fűhrers' Life-Styles must be defended,
however many Patients' lives are curtailed]
Ms Palin makes my winkle feel funny
call a doctor!!!!
Wait until you have an elderly relative in hospital and you will see ageist death panels at work. It is frightening.
I took my 90 y/o father into the GPs recently with neck/back pain… the GP couldn’t believe he was still alive and wanted to do lots of other tests as “90% of male cadavers turn out to have prostate cancer — it may well be something innocuous but we should be sure”. His eyes were alight with the prospect that Dad was probably for the next world.
After a miserable couple of week he got the results of the tests and there was nothing wrong with him at all… he’d just spent a bit too long trying to get the apples off the higher branches of his trees. But I thought those guys on Guido are right about NHS standing for the National Death Service/Sentence. The GP couldn’t contain himself.
I think you mis-interpreted the gleam in the eye of the Doctor.
They get extra money for doing these tests on the older folk [like me!].
I suspect the gleam was pure avarice.
But glad your dad is well.
You do know that a test for prostate cancer is a digital examination? The glint in the eye of the doctor may mean something else altogether…
No, NHS does NOT stand for National Death Service. Think about what you’ve said for a moment.
Its not far off with all the filth, infection, and over-staffing. Has the doubling of funding by this crazy subversive government doubled the quality and efficiency of the NHS? If the Americans go down this path they are crazy.
What filth? Have you been in a hospital in the last decade?! They clean the wards three times a day for gods sake!
Typical nutter ‘everything in the UK is shit’ blogger statement with no grounding in the real world.
I was in the Mater hospital last weekend my mum had a heart attack, it was clean, staff were brilliant, mums okay now.
Stop panning the NHS compare it to the rest of the world and it comes off pretty well, it isn’t perfect but to accuse it of being terrible is simply moronic. Have you ever travelled outside of Europe?! Go to the States and see what normal middle class and working class people deal with its hell compared to here.
My fucking brother in law got mrsa in the Homerton and they didnt fucking find it til he got transferred to Barts.
Never recovered from the fucker. I saw with my own eyes, orderlies going in and out of isolation rooms without using the fucking hand gel. We found a fucking half full piss bottle under his bed, in an isolation room which because he was bedridden, he couldnt move. He told the staff about it, no c’unt picked it up. It stayed there for the best part of two days until the wife and I went to see him and then ripped the infection control nurse a fresh one. All the c’unt did was shrug his shoulders. Nothing changed. Within a fortnight of that, my brother in law was dead.
Some places are tidy and well run. A significant amount though are shitholes that you only ever come out of dead. My missus has had an undiagnosed condition for nearly 10 months now. They’ve got half an idea as to what it is, but no fucking idea as to where the hell it came from despite CT, Ultrasound, MRI, biopsies, endoscopies…
Absolugtely right, Ian Dales.
National Death Sentence would be more like it.
Certainly I know that when my mother in law was in hospital I felt it necessary to advise one “whatever they call them now but I still know them as auxiliaries” that having provided one patient with a bedpan, she needed to wash her hands before coming anywhere near my mother in law. Now if I had actively disliked the mother in law….
you really are a fucking idiot, aren’t you? “they tested my father at public expense but there wasn’t anything wrong with him” is a pathetic “look at me whining on the internet” complaint. Presumably you feel it would be better for noone to be tested, then?
The issue with any system (whether social or private) is that someone has to decide whether or not certain drugs are cost effective.
The insurance companies in the US are exactly the same, deciding every day which treatments are appropriate for certain patients, usually on cost grounds too. This is surely much closer to the “death Panel” than would happen in a more social system such as the NHS?
The beef many people have with the NHS is that they employ more management consultants than clinical consultants – sort that problem out and the drugs bill can be significantly higher for the same overall budget.
Try and keep up, Steve: these are private death panels, so that’s ok. As to witchcraft, we in the NHS have the voodoo economics of PFI and PPP which leads to NHS organisations being stuffed full of totally unproductive suits. If someone could exorcise these, we would all be grateful.
Agreed on your second point about PFI and PPP.
Maybe also if there were more clinical consultants than management consultants in the NHS, the drugs budget could be raised somewhat as a result.
Leave it out lads, we all have to earn a living…
Join a proper NHS Trust then mate and you will get far more than your £500 daily pittance. Do you work in Surrey or some such place?
PFI and PPP are sadly not confined to the NHS
they will ensure whatever our current level of debt is it will keep increasing as fast as we pay it down should the madness continue
no sign of Cameron giving them up though
Absolutely none. Cameron loves the NHS because he has access to the elite NHS which he and evryone else on the bandwaggon deny exists. It does – socialists know how to cater for elites so if you are one of the rare union leaders not on private treatment you will be well looked after.
Cameron loves the NHS because he has access to the elite NHS which he and evryone else on the bandwaggon deny exists.
Really? Where’s this elite hospital then?
He’s talking about P.F.I. and P.P.P. stupid
I have a friend who served as a Health Authority Chairman; no matter how hard she tried, whenever she went to a hospital the grapevine let them know who she was and she was always given a room, personal consultant attention, etc.
That elite NHS…
Ben is absolutely correct. It’s all down to how the money should be spent. On doctors? On drugs and equiptment? On hospitals? Or on “managers” , “consultants” and civil servants? I know which I would choose – and it wouldn’t be paying the salary (what is it, by the way?) of Andrew Dillon.
.. er I mean “Steve Expat”. Who’s Ben??????
That’s rubbish. The NHS will deny you treatment if you decide to pay for the drugs yourself. How is that fair?
The point about NICE is the individual has no right of appeal, you’re just expected to die quietly.
In the USA YOU the individual can speak to your doctor and insurance about it and possibly contribute financially towards it but still get the treatment.
Of course mincing lefties don’t care as none of them use the NHS, they all go private just like BBC staff.
Or the Prime minister himself.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/816/Brown-forks-out-to-avoid-the-dentist-queues
Shame he didn’t get seen to by Mr Olivier a la Marathon Man.
Ohhh – 5 minutes with a dental drill in Brown’s wierd mouth would be fun!
“Is it safe?”
“The economy? Fuck no!”
NICE has some very difficult decisions to make which affect patients and families. What is true is that an insurance systems would be much worse.Try getting treatment in the States without insurance.There are no death panels in Britain only well meaning people trying to make some very difficult choices for the benefit of the majority.It’s a none issue as far as politics is concerned.
This is right – it shows the arrogant vindictive side of the NHS – conform or else!
Twat, you are a twat.
Anyone is free to go to a private hospital, slam their dosh on the table and say “treat me”. No one is forced to use the NHS.
Co-pay (where the patient contributes to the cost) will create a two tier NHS of those that can pay, and those that cannot.
Once the people complain about that (remember, voters vote-in the government, and voters don’t like being denied treatment) then co-pay will be “adjusted” by means testing and those that can pay but refuse to pay, will be denied the treatment. Your silly little plan will backfire.
Dogmatic fucking bullshit.
What the fuck do you think happens with dentistry now? Not much of a fucking noise about two tiers in that motherfucker is there?
This is the same shite that c’unting over promoting postman tried to fill us with when he was fucking health secretary.
If someone has paid in all their lives and offers to pay out of their own fucking pocket to top up their treatment, how the fuck does that hurt the rest who cant afford it? Its not taking anything off them is it?
Fucking dogmatic labour c’unts. I fucking hate ‘em.
It shouldnt matter if you cant afford top ups, you should still be able to get treated. Thats what you fucking pay tax and NI for. If they cant afford any other way, they cant afford any other way, it doesnt mean that they dont get treated. It just means they dont get the additional drugs because the PCT’s would rather spend it on more managers or agency nurses and NICE dont give a fuck about how much the NHS gets shafted by the Pharmas.
If someone dips into their own pocket, the fucking socialists get all fucking uppity about it, claiming that its going to deny the ordinary deep fried mars bar eating poor the chance of treatment? Socialists couldnt give a fuck about the poor. If there was no poor, no c’unt would vote for them!
What a fucking mess.
“Not much of a fucking noise about two tiers in that motherfucker is there”
what a retard
You’ve got no answer to it anony mouse, thats why all you can do is fucking throw insults at me.
So, until you can come up with an answer that either refutes the points or argues them to convince me I’m wrong, I suggest you shut the fuck up.
The amount of value you add to the debate is less than fucking zero.
“The amount of value you add to the debate is less than fucking zero.”
Oh, the bitter, means-tested irony.
all alone at home with Kilroy, Kleenex and more than time on your hands again, you tragic onanistic whinging Hoon.
Ms Palin makes my winkle feel funny
call a doctor!!!
You forget to mention that these parasites are leeching vital funding that could have gone towards giving people the drugs they need, if Dillon is on around a hundred grand a year that could alone could fund a good portion of those ordinary people that he condemns to an early death!
Ooooh yes, the very parasites who leech millions off the NHS to decide who is worth saving and who gets to live longer are directly diverting the very funds that could give most people the drugs they need, its like living in a 1984 type perverted nightmare.
I really dont know how these evil leeches can sleep at night knowing full well that their inflated nonjob gravytrain salaries are directly causing untold misery and suffering, they should be ashamed of themselves!
also forgotten is the important detail that NICE applies to England only.
( it used to apply to England and Wales but that has now changed)
England is hugely less well funded by the British state than Wales or Scotland
all the latest drugs are easily avilable in Scotland , including Nexavar. There is no financial-as opposed to medical- limit on its availability in Scotland
AND THEY USE ENGLISH MONEY TO DO THIS ( BARNETT RULES)
so what this means is that the British government operates a policy of nationalist discrimination against the English with live and death implications.
I bet Palin didn’t know that !
Scotland has issues of access to treatment as well, carpng on about people North of the border having a far easier time of things is not correct. Nexavar may be available but many others are not.
Nexavar is NOT available in Scotland.
http://www.test.druginfozone.nhs.uk/record%20viewing/viewRecord.aspx?id=595031
Your pathetic attempt at trolling has failed.
Next time get your facts right before you show your ignorance.
Grant Scotland full independence (inc oil revenue). Then close the border & stop funding them.
Well said Ben, what part of there is only so much money in the pot, do people not understand.
There is actually plenty of money in the pot, the problem is that leeching parasitical gravytrain riding pigs are diverting money from the NHS front line and into their own pockets.
What part of there is plenty of money going into the NHS its how its spent/wasted on useless parasites do you not get?
It’s pretty naive to think that cutting out the trust managers would free up enough funding to ‘fix’ all of these issues that you people seem to think the NHS has caused.
Assuming every trust sacked their managers at this apparently-standard £300k that everyone keeps spouting. There was 147 PCTs in the country, this would save a total of 44million, give or take. If you had any idea what a drop in the ocean for NHS funding that was, you would realise that the problem you all have with the ‘parasites’ isn’t the problem.
The problem is a country full of fat, drinking smokers who don’t take enough care of themselves. But no, we’re not allowed to say it out loud.
The media can’t be seen to upset Joe Public. THEY MIGHT STOP PAYING THEM! Better just keep crying a feckin’ river over managers being paid too much. That’ll fi it right up.
The really sad thing is that a patient with the cash to extend his own life by buying privately would be denied the chance in the interest of “fairness”. This assumes that he is not an MP in which case I suppose it would be regarded as a legitimate living expense
Not true. NICE only applies to the NHS. The private system will treat you with any licenced drug. If you’ve got the money, use the private system. That is what it is there for.
Utterly moronic, Guido, you fuckwit. What’s the alternative? Unlimited NHS expenditure and huge tax rises to pay for it? Clown, absolute clown. And how about some coverage of that troughing Hoon Curry.
Most European countries have systems with clearly defined medical coverage and a non-Stalinist hospital system. This means that you get good quality care quickly delivered, and can separate a public debate about coverage and payment from the delivery of care itself.
In the NHS you get no clarity on what the NHS would deliver; you are promised everything but don’t know if it will actually deliver.
Elsewhere health care finance is the political issue; here poor care and covert rationing are the issue. I know which approach I think is better.
Ever wonder why, when the republicans went looking for something to really scare people, they decided that UK health system, not the French, Italian, German or Spanish healthcare system, fitted the bill? Our response was so parochial we never asked – “why did they choose us?”.
Well spotted that man.
Cuts both ways. Any query about the NHS is replied to by saying but the USA system is much worse, and never about all the other systems, Canada, Australia, and the European counties etc. Odd that.
Up to a point, yes, but whether I really know exactly what is and isn’t covered in my German health insurance is something I’d only find it when the ultra-rare disease strikes, heaven forbid. It isn’t that much different to the situation in the UK. And the National Health has a higher ranking than the German system. I can see many reasons why, too. Not many people here are very happy with the current state of things. France is another matter. They seem to have arranged things very well as far as I understand them.
In the end though, what can I reasonably expect. I’d hope that if some treatment is available that will genuinely save my life, it would be available. Extending a low quality life for some extra months with very expensive drugs I would probably not expect. I don’t think the NHS is that bad. Health system rankings tend to agree.
Entirely true – I nearly dropped Germany from my list. They have been slashing drug access using “therapeutic groups” to require huge co-pays for the decent drugs. But the clear split between Krankenkausen and providers does mean that coverage is well defined.
Health systems rankings though tend to place great weight on formal equality, coverage and access and tend to ignore low expectations and specific failures of provision.
Bullshit. it decides more than whether just drugs are “affordable”, yes, “affordable”. It attaches little or no weight to clinical excellence. It also decides on the “affordability” of procedures and decides protocols on their deployment within the NHS. IE Deciding on what clinical category of patient can be “afforded” what procedures and medicines. it is not just deciding on drugs.
EG: Patients over a certain age are “not worth” the expenditure associated with a given range of therapies and drugs. All this is wrapped up in some Death-panel-esque bullshit socialist smoke and mirrors quango claiming to be looking after our interests. While granted that the pot of money available is finite the decision making processes allotting treatment is not medically based it is bureaucrat/financially based. Guido’s original statement is valid. The tosspots deciding this are bureaucrats not Doctors.
NICE has one objective only. It is to deflect the blame for such decisions from politicians,so they do not look bad.
I note that no Health Minister has taken a reduced salary since the inception of NICE and it’s always ‘the government’ who overturn the decision,never NICE.
The political classes are weasels.
that would be the very definition of a Quango
fuck all to do with me! sack those buggers
I agree. Guido now thinks he has solved ethics and the vastly difficult decisions when making value judgements. Perhaps he could lecture professors of moral philosophy on the issue.
“NICE decides which drugs the NHS, with it’s finite budget, can afford to provide.”
No, it is deciding what one year of quality life is worth.
Strange how the budget to mount illegal inavsions of other sovereign nations is never a bar to military action.
Yes, Guido is right. I may be homeless and in bad health and I might not make it through the winter because of a chest infection but at least I haven’t got no death panel hanging over my head deciding whether I live or die!
This Guido guy is a very intelligent and compassionate man. God Bless America and its stooges!
And I also believe that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic president. The best ever!
I am a bit drunk right now and I have been smoking crack cocaine so that might have affected my judgment, right?
ben,
you’re wasting your time. guido has no idea, and no wish to learn, about NICE and their statutory underpinnings
t
On the contrary, Guido has shone another light onto the Quangocracy so beloved of nuliebor. NICE is acting precisely as the “death panel” mentioned by Ms Palin. You may want to dress the decision up with budgetary necessities but this does not alter the fact.
The Quango is there for liebor ministers to do a Pontius Pilate act over any controversial decisions.
If brains were dynamite Mzz Palin wouldn’t be able to blow her own nose
probably why you like her so much
‘Death Panel’ is a childish oversimplified talking point piece of spin for the hard of thinking
The reality is indeed a complex negotiation between drug manufacturers and healthcare providers, scientific advice and statutory requirements and the fiscal reality of nation wide provision of a healthcare system free at the point of delivery for some 61 Million people.
which is why Palin doesn’t understand it and neither do you
And by the way, fuck Labour. I’ve never voted for them and never will
Cameron smacked Daniel Hannan down hard for his ‘eccentric’ Palin/Fox News foolishness over the NHS, so don’t pretend the Conservative Party support your fringe views
It’s a sign of how feeble your rhetoric is that you parrot that rubbish at anyone who disagrees with you
Cameron smacked Daniel Hannan down hard for his ‘eccentric’ (sic)…foolishness over the NHS…” SO WHAT! We’ve already seen what Cameron’s “iron cast” guarantees bring. It does not mean that Daniel Hannan’s view was wrong.
‘Death Panel’ may well be an oversimplified way of pointing out an unpalatable fact but it also helps to focus on the argument. For all your realities of complex negotiation between drug manufacturers and healthcare providers, scientific advice etc. the fact remains that rationing, for that is the organisational method adopted by the NHS, is a most inefficient way of providing health care and the NICE “Death Panel” outcome is one manifestation of this inefficiency. Ask yourelf, is this drug available in Germany or France? I think you’ll find that it is?
It is actually you who is busy parroting mantras with your free at the point of delivery shiboleth which ought to be questioned. Health care is sufficiently important for people to take responsibility for their own health and give it far greater priority over other superfluous items in their lives. Other ways of organising health care provision should be investigated, but no all you see is that the NHS can do no wrong.
Btw you may not vote nuliebor, but you seem to have swallowed the nuliebor propaganda put forward in some of the Troll comments that this is a Conservative Party run web site!
Fuck off back to Alaska Sarah
Go shout at some dinosaur bones for being blasphemous
The UK thinks you and Bush are NeoCon nutters and always will
How about the small area committees that decide whether to withold food and water?
You will get there in the end, just hope you know nothing of it
Even R4 called it a rationing body. As you say, the NHS cannot afford it, and so rationing must stay in place, 50 odd years after most rationing ended.
The net result is the same as if the NHS didn’t exist – only the rich can afford the best care.
R4 are trying to cozy up to Jeremy Hunt, they’ve only got 6 months to persuade him not to privatise them.
“Finite budget”???
Given the tens of billions that are poured into it?
Are you taking the fucking piss???
So, if its fairly freely available elsewhere in the world, why the fuck cant we have it?
The problem is that the pin headed civil serpent fuckwits who buy the drugs for the NHS are no different to the pin headed civil serpent fuckwits who buy equipment for the military.
its not coming out of their pocket, so they dont give a fuck how much the NHS get overcharged by the Pharma’s when they buy the shit for them.
So, how is that the patients fault that these pin headed fuckers dont know how to or dont give a fuck about securing best value for the patient?
Bollocks. Put the pin headed fuckers back on the fucking dole where they fucking belong. Bring the authority for drug purchase back down to the local PCT level instead.
Wankers.
Finite – bounded or limited in magnitude or spatial or temporal extent
Infinite – having no limits or boundaries in time or space or extent or magnitude
Are you taking the fucking piss you ignorant shit-eating fuckstick ???
Tens of Billions is not an unlimited number
Bankers would probably call it small potatoes
a bonfire of the quangos
cut back the beaurocrats
never hard that before have we ?
same old bullshit
No fucker has done it though have they lazy?
Could it be why things are still fucked up?
I stand by what I said. Fuck the civil serpents. Sack the Hoons. They only work for the civil service cos no other fucker would touch them with a twenty foot fucking tentpole.
wankers the fucking lot of them.
This post, Guido, is, as Ben has already commented, disingenuous beyond belief — very disappointing.
First, re. “death panels”, you will actually find that these convene quite frequently in the USA, where their requirements can be so exacting as to determine both the precise manner and date of the patient’s demise. Mrs Palin is rather keen that this practice should continue, we understand. Only four countries executed more citizens in 2008 than America: China; Iran; Saudi Arabia; DPRK. Not exactly savoury company, Sarah…
We all know the NHS is far from perfect, but this does not alter the fact that it has limited funding and needs some objective way to decide which new drugs it should make available.
Genuine, hard, internationally-recognised scientific evidence is used by NICE to establish the effectiveness of new drugs and this information, balanced with the prices set by drug companies, enables the cost-effectiveness of new treatments to be calculated, as well as the opportunity cost of prescribing them to be understood. (You understand the concept of opportunity cost, Guido?).
It is very unfortunate that some patients cannot be given some treatments as a consequence of this approval process, but this would be certain to be the case under any system that does not have infinite resources (and even if money were no object, it is reasonable to suppose that: a) some patients’ expectations would still not be met, and; b) any incentive for drug companies to engage in price competition would be negated almost entirely).
No other area of government spending is so methodical or scientific in its approach: there are far fewer white elephants in the drug budget than elsewhere in the public sector.
Guido, you know all of this already (even if, like Mr Dillon, you are also neither a doctor nor a scientist).
I really would have thought such a post as this would have been beneath you.
Who were the drugs developed for then?
The whole raison d`etre of socialism is to ration the population as a whole or bit by tiny bit,hence all this green agenda ,how many children can you fit in a wizz auto,how many children can you raise in a tiny flat,how many children can you raise on an overtaxed income while paying a mortgage on an over-priced home etc
How many socialist/communist countries population have ACTUALLY seen their population rise not to mind the state organised famines of china,cambodia,ussr etc,
Socialism is a war on population hidden behind the death mask of compassion
Ms Palin makes my winkle feel funny
call a doctor !!!!
You genuinely have no idea what you are talking about. Communist Cuba helps out a whole slew of capitalist societies in Latin America who, strangely enough, can’t train enough doctors/provide enough resources to look after their populations.
Would you receive a better chance of medical care if you were poor in Guatemala or Cuba? You won’t accept the answer, but it begins with C, as does a proper description of your good self.
This post is written by somebody who has interacted with health systems of Cuba, Guatemala, UK and the US, not by a know-nothing who wants to wax lyrical about death masks.
Yet strangely the NHS restricts access to specialists drugs that are made available in most wealtyh/developed country healthcare systems. It is known as an outlier market.
Is the objective international evidence different here, or is everyone else just wrong.
Funny how no-ones answered that yet, Memory Man. I can see the fucking tumbleweed blowing past…
Spot on.
Come on Guido, if you want to rabble rouse; there are better arguments you can make than this.
£30,000 for a quality year of life pales into insignificance before the second home allowances, the John Lewis list, the unreceipted food bills and all the other benefits the venal and mostly stupid 646 were paying themselves in addition to a handsome salary.
The most recent statistics I can find are from 2007, when 2,545 people died from liver cancer. Even if all of those patients were suitable for treatment with Nexavar, then at around £35000 per patient per year, that roughly equates to what some of the worst troughers were claiming – are MPs expenses more important than liver cancer patients?
Fuck you, fuck NICE and most of all fuck the 646. NICE is a fucking joke – they recommend 3 free cycles of IVF for couples who could easily adopt (at a cost of around £15K), but refuse to keep cancer patients alive.
Palin is a lunatic, but whoever came up with NICE is an even worse and more callous lunatic.
‘Death panel’ conjures up the idea of a panel deciding whether individuals live or die.
Well, that is exactly what NICE does, directly or indirectly.
That people’s lives should be snuffed out on the basis of its completely arbitrary decisions is a moral outrage.
Agree. This is the stupidist entry I have read on this blog for a long while.
Would have expected Guido to be at the forefront of efforts to publicly expose the opportunity costs and trade-offs involved in determining where best to invest the public’s money. The criteria NICE uses to make these decisions is published on their website – enabling a more informed debate about health and drugs spending than in the past, where often, the NHS was regarded as a bottomless pit.
What a load of b****ks
Don’t be a fearmongering idiot. Nexavar isn’t a life or death drug, it’s only indicated for use in patients with terminal cancer and even then it will only prolong life by a few months in a proportion of patients who are lucky enough to respond. I know it’s tempting for you to jump in with a BROKEN BRITAN FILTHY POLITICIANS KILLING PEOPLE comment but taking the time to do a little reading around the topic, particularly the original studies of Nexavar and the associated expert commentary would help you realise your stance is not a good one to take.
Also, what does being the CEO of NICE have to do with anything? The drug decisions are made by a panel encompassing everyone from doctors to pharmacists to economists to laypeople. Andrew Dillion has no final say or overall control over the process so it’s a misleading point that you can only use to try and drum up support for your weak opinion.
Finally, to say “if it costs more than £30,000, you are dead” is extremely misleading. The patients eligiable for the drugs that fall under this category are going to die anyway because they have advanced metastatic cancer. At best these drugs will give a few extra months of life at an extreme cost for people unwilling to accept their impending mortality. This is money that could be better spent on palliative care services to help people die as dignified as possible.
We are all going to die anyway. But does it not give you pause for thought that the NHS makes decisions such as this which run contrary to the decisions made in the healthcare systems of most developed countries.
We are almost always the outlier that doesn’t fund these drugs compared to France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, etc. Either we are blessed that the “envy of the world” NHS is uniquely capable at making these fine moral judgments or we deliver “EasyCancer” levels of service. Which do you think it is?
to say “if it costs more than £30,000, you are dead” is extremely misleading.
Indeed., anyone who can be bothered can look up the details of how the decisions are made on the NICE website.
In effect they determine how much extra life you will get on the drug and also the quality of that life. Then they work out the cost to get the equivalent of one years of quality extra life. Now comes the bit that most people ignore. They then find the difference between this cost and the cost of the alternative. It is this difference that has to mean the £20-30K criteria. That means that a drug that costs considerably more than £30k a year can pass this test, if it is significantly better than the alternative.
It should be obvious that if the drug cures the person then the drug will pass this test. It is also obvious that if the drug gives the person a few extra weeks in excruciating pain at a high cost then it will fail this test. And of course, if a drug is only marginally better than the existing approved treatment, but the cost is considerably more, then it will fail the test.
NICE is not just determining the cost of the drug, but also how effective the drug is and whether giving the drug actually gives the person any greater quality of life. That is not a death panel, and only a brainless bimbo could describe it as such.
You “it” (Guido said “a quality-year of life”) costs more than £30k. And you have got NICE the wrong way around.
A drug that costs more than £30k per life-year would never ever pass. But a drug that could pass stand-alone won’t pass if there is an inferior drug that delivers greater “value for money”.
E.g. if 1 QUALY (quality adjusted life year) for Nexavar costs £30k, but another drug delivers 6 months for £14k, the incremental 6 months would cost £32k, so NICE would recommend other drug instead.
But what is important to know is
(a) these extensions are averages, and in late stage cancer it is usually “most die and a few live a long time” not “everyone lives x more months”, so the averages are quite uncertain (and cancer is mostly a disease of the old which complicates things too) and
(b) different people and tumours respond to different drugs very differently but NICE thinks it should over-ride the professional skill of an oncologist on this.
Anyway, this NICE decision has just trashed the governments recent decision that end-of-life care should have more relaxed rules (because a few more months when you have weeks to live is more valuable than a few more months when you have decades to live).
Indeed? Please explain how that equates with the NICE mision statement of:
‘NICE is an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health’
1. It is not independent. It’s a special health authority and funded by the taxpayer.
2. The second part seems at odds with what NICE is supposedly trying to do ?
3. I note that NICE was originally formed to deal with the postcode lottery – except Scotland where it has no jurisdiction
Please spare me the pious rant about needing to control funding.Money is spent like water with little proof of effectiveness on a daily basis in the whole public sector. Perhaps we could shut down a few Regional Assemblies or other wastes of space to fund something more worthwhile like this treatment.
Actually,NICE is determining the prognosis for a would be recipient of the drug. Denying it on cost grounds means they will not receive it and will die.
Who has made the decision which will bring that about? Call the panel what you like.It makes no difference to the individual concerned.
Saying that the two events are unconnected is an equally ‘brainless bimbo’ stance. Still let’s worry about how to label the participants in the discussion and indulge in some abuse -it beats thinking.
good luck to our yanky nieghbours , if they thought duya was bad they aint seen nothing yet barry will fuck the US like grodon has fucked us
laying on of hands eh?
those look like experienced medical practitioners
probably skilled chiropractors
who needs western medicine or expensive drugs with the Palin plan healthcare system! but does being possessed by demons count as a pre-existing medical condition in the red states ?
thank you jebus!
Smug twat. If the NHS didn’t spend so much on useless homeopathy, you might be able to sustain a feeling of superiority to the yanks.
I think he’s pretty obviously using the alternative therapist moniker as a piss-take
Homeopathy is anti-science bullshit
And it’s about time someone told Prince Charles and the rest of the idiots promoting it
I’ve only seen this broadcasted on Sky News, by the way. You know, that horrible evil Murdoch channel that’ll turn into Faux Noise if the evil Tories win!
Other than that, carry on.
good
we sadly only get to see Fox rarely to laugh at here in Britain
you can’t put a price on comedy like that
(OT)
Everyone remember where Gordon had his summer holiday? Yes, you’ve guessed it, Cockermouth.
http://www.timesandstar.co.uk/news/business/lake_district_holiday_for_gordon_brown_1_598117
Can we seal up the door of his bunker please?
It looks like a very old picture of brown
It really is incredible – this evil man is the Devil himself.
Look at the date that Brown became the unelected Prime Minister;
27th June 2007.
The Tewkesbury floods hit a few weeks later in mid July 2007.
I was made redundant for the first time in 30 years in October….2007.
Everywhere,simply everywhere he goes,a trail of utter chaos and ruin follows him;
Factories close,industries collapse,children’s financial future’s dissolve,wars happen,economies shredded,bereaved mothers insulted…it goes on and on and on.
Perhaps he will be available for an updated “The Omen” film?
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
The dead rising from the grave!
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
Uncanny really the year before he holidayed in Suffolk — ever since, we’ve been fighting against wind farms, an undercover ski resort, NATS air traffic control changes, plans to ensure that 40% of traveller/gypsy sites in the UK are located in EA, 1000s of new-build greenfield housing… it’s been one damn thing after another.
The year that Brown got his first meal ticket as an MP my dog died.
BRB, just got to get my pitchfork and a blazing torch. While I’m at it I’ll go and round up a brainless baying mob that doesn’t know the difference between paediatrican and paedophile.
:)
Try the labour club down the road,they keep voting for tyranny so the spelling thing is bound to go over their heads
Here’s a puff piece from the time:
http://www.golakes.co.uk/prime-minister-visit.aspx
I don’t know about Armathwaite Hall, but Armathwaite itself will be under water – it is halfway between Keswick and Cockermouth.
You couldn’t make it up.
Cock…er….mouth.Brown dithers.
However buying anti virals for some Aids infested asylum seeker is a wise investment.
You know some of are already in camps so we could just expand them a little add a few more zealous guards trained by Mr Griffin and bobs your holocaust
(not that such a thing exists)
no more problem
very clever man that Adolf
In the place I grew up an African illegal/asylum seeker with Aids infected five women by having unprotected sex.
The place was Mitcham. Look up the story yourself.
How much money was spent on him and now his victims that could have been spent elsewhere?
You equate the truth with facism?
Always the left’s last resort
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
satire is wasted on the humourless
1. Your obviously talking bollocks Guido. We can’t just spend money on every single drug that prolongs life by a couple months. When you write something like this: “If the panel determines that a “quality year of life” will cost the NHS more than £30,000, you are dead…” you reveal yourself to be a bit foolish. They are terminal patients sop they are sort of going to die anyway!
2. Stop trying to get involved in “policy discussions”. Your not doing too well with them. Stick to gossip and scandal. You much better at that.
3. Where is all the good gossip and scandal recently? Nothing juciy seems to have come out of this blog for a while. I miss those days. Is Guido losing it?
So the scum MP’s get £400 per month to fill their corruption-filled,fat, bloated grotty bellies and it’s okay to deny a longer life is it you fucking arsehole?
649 x £400 x 12 months = £3,115,200 for those scum to have extra food.
1 year of “extended life” = £30,000
So those bastards are sending 104 people to an earlier death so they can get fatter?
Hang your head in shame you total c*unt.
Agreed.
Total c*nt.
Agreed ((Cough cough!!!))
Utter C*nt! ((Cough cough!!!))
I agree
cun’t cun’t cun’t
Of course MPs being thieves isn’t okay but it’s got fuck all to do with N.I.C.E. spending allocation unless you know of a Political Party that plans to drop all expenses and use that money on funding drugs for the NHS ?
MPs being pigs can apply to any area of spending you care to mention
Only an ignorant cunt would try a smokescreen of populist anger against MPs to try and hide his lack of any coherent countering argument
Populist anger?
Friday morning must be “Tosser’s Day” here at Guido.
more flaccid pitiful attempts to insult
could you make it any more obvious you are out of your fucking depth and clutching at straws?
“it takes one to know one” for fucks sake son, grow up
Blimey – these tossers are having a go at each other!
Surely it is all Brown’s fault?
submental troll
Of course its not ok. Strip them of their expenses. Put some more money into the NHS. Its still not going to cover every single treatment available!
Idiot, scum twat
don’t waste your time
he’s a submental troll
They don’t like it up ‘em Guido. You must have struck a chord here as the liebor attack dogs are out in force today claiming that they have a counter argument. The question to ask is why the health services of Germany and France are able to supply this drug when our own GLORIOUS NHS is unable to do so.
Could it be that the NHS way of providing health is NOT THE BEST WAY OF DOING IT? That is the point being avoided by all those wittering on about budget limitations etc.
Mr Cameron was embarrassed when Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP, went on television in American to launch an outspoken attack on the NHS during a debate on President Barack Obama’s proposed health care reforms.
While he was quick to distance himself from the comments, Mr Hannan’s remarks – in which he described the NHS as a “relic” – were seized on by Labour, who accused the Tories of being “two-faced” on health.
The row was seen as damaging to the Conservatives’ attempts to “detoxify” their public image on health; but Mr Cameron is said to be “confident” that he can prove his commitment to the NHS in the run up to the general election.
A spokesman said that he was happy to seize the opportunity presented by Labour’s attacks to set out his commitment to the health service, which his family came to rely on for help caring for his heavily disabled son Ivan, who died earlier this year.
Mr Cameron dismissed the Labour attacks as ”political point-scoring” and stressed his party’s ”wholehearted commitment” to the principle of a health care system free at the point of delivery.
“Could it be that the NHS way of providing health is NOT THE BEST WAY OF DOING IT?”
Nope.
Mr Cameron was embarrassed when Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP, went on television in American to launch an outspoken attack on the NHS during a debate on President Barack Obama’s proposed health care reforms.
While he was quick to distance himself from the comments, Mr Hannan’s remarks – in which he described the NHS as a “relic” – were seized on by Labour, who accused the Tories of being “two-faced” on health.
The row was seen as damaging to the Conservatives’ attempts to “detoxify” their public image on health; but Mr Cameron is said to be “confident” that he can prove his commitment to the NHS in the run up to the general election.
A spokesman said that he was happy to seize the opportunity presented by Labour’s attacks to set out his commitment to the health service, which his family came to rely on for help caring for his heavily disabled son who died earlier this year.
Mr Cameron dismissed the Labour attacks as ”political point-scoring” and stressed his party’s ”wholehearted commitment” to the principle of a health care system free at the point of delivery.
“Could it be that the NHS way of providing health is NOT THE BEST WAY OF DOING IT?”
Nope.
Nope. Some argument.
Still avoiding the question as to why other EUROPEAN health services can provide this drug when our own Quangocracy has to set up a “death panel”?
Mr Cameron dismissed the Labour attacks as ”political point-scoring” and stressed his party’s ”wholehearted commitment” to the principle of a health care system free at the point of delivery.
Ahh, the ‘is Guido losing it’ meme…
Good dog. Yap yap.
I wuv Sarah Palin and agree with everything you say uncle Guido
Now sit up and beg little poodle. yip! yip! yip! yip!
wat
O/T but another example of this corrupt bunch of criminals;
“Miss Harman, a former Solicitor General, was banned from driving for seven days and fined £400 after admitting speeding at 99mph on the M4 near Swindon, Wiltshire, in January 2003″.
Out of curiosity, has she ever been done for soliciting ?
it merely decides NHS funding and what it will cover. In the USA these decisions are made by an insurance company board. What is the difference? In either country you can pay for the drug if you have the money.
Whilst there are plenty of pen pushers to sack don’t be fooled that freezing Nhs funding won’t affect drug funding. We have to cut the budget defecit if the country is to stay solvent.
Exactly. It’s just that Americans have a massive fear of anyone in government deciding what they can or cannot do – they have no problem at all with being bent over and fucked hard by private companies though.
Surely the insurance companies are acting much more on an individual basis than NICE, making it more like the quated “Death Panels”
As Portillo said on This Week last night, these type of difficult desicions (in this country) should not be made by bureaucrats, but by elected and accountable politicians. The only reason for NICE is to protect the politicos for unpopular decisions such as this.
No you can’t wank stain. If you buy the drugs here the NHS will stop ALL treatment. How fucking thick are you lot at Liebour HQ?
Jeez, lots of very sensible comment on here responding to Guido’s silly little screed. Except ‘Obama is a Twat’ who appears to be….a twat.
Matt (or should that be ‘Twat’?) the postser was talking shite. In the USA the decision on treatment is taken by your insurance company your doctor and yourself. You can contribute to the cost of treatment where as in England if you try to do that the NHS decides to withdraw ALL treatment.
Explain away that you stupid leftie Hoon.
look up BUPA and the private sector you neocon fuckwit
not only CAN you use them but people DO use them
Not true that paying for extra drugs stops nhs treatment, the rules changed last year. Prepare for top up fees for other areas shortly, under any govt. We have to have a safety net but we have to have financial sanity also.
And that’s how it should be. Cut the fucking subscription to Sky Sports, stop smoking, cut down on the beer and pay a top up to prolong your life.
shut the fuck up you retarded little wanker
Anon: What has BUPA got to do with the NHS?
It doesn’t, he just wants to call you an evil neocon Zioniiiiiiiiiiiiist.
That’s alright then!
I agree with everything I say
innit?
Not true that paying for extra drugs stops nhs treatment, the rules changed last year.
Actually the government reconfirmed the legal position as it stood – though some NHS trusts had been either illegally charging (NHS charges must have specific statutory authorisiation) or illegally withdrawing access to care.
Nothing you do privately has any impact on your right to NHS treatment (except in the special case of cost recovery from car and persoal injury insurance which is an after the event fudge).
The NHS should outsource it’s Death Panels to Dignitas.
We could save some money and get real experts doing the job………….
Could we outsource the Prime Minister to Dignitas?
They would go bust and fail within hours, just look at the curse he put on the lake district with his holiday
As I recall in a recent judgement NICE were told they can’t make decisions purely on cost
Also why should there be restraint when it comes to cost. It seems plenty of money existed to bail out the bank so why not pay for people to live longer
No this is an a somewhat crude attempt by NICE to place the blame at the door of the manufacturers as to cost & it’s backfired
I’m sure if people promise dot vote Liebour and fund the BBC they’d get the treatment free.
fawkes why the fuck are you ignoring the most talked about political story of the week ?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article6924267.ece
There is apparently a minor diplomatic row breaking out here between Ireland and France – rumour has it that Mr Cowen mentioned it to M. Sarkozy at the EU dinner last night…
Cowen keeps phoning up Sarkozy, shouts ‘Le Chump’ and hangs up.
BIFFO is just playing to the crowd. He can say he had words with Shorty Sarky, but it won’t make a scrap of difference.
The referee’s decision is final. If the ref didn’t see it, he can’t make a judgement.
The Irish FA knows the rules as do the French and the match officials.
However, if the match officials were encouraged by a third party to be a bit favourable to the French… that’s a whole big fat corrupt can of worms that needs to be opened.
Cowen should ask the European Commission to intervene, they’re always good at making sure Ireland eventually gets the right result.
Just shows you what the French do to you after you go to the trouble of a new referendum, they cheat . I think this should show everbody just what we are up against in Europe
Hope lego can come out with with update for christmas.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/balakov/2508921097/
Get the boats ready – next stop Normandy for Part Two.
Better not let Brown anywhere near – he’ll only get booed.
Wht’s all the excitement about – It’s only wendyball.
Flanker, we both know that the better game involves using your hands to carry the ball.
The world would be a better place if the wendyball players had the respect of the match officials too.
The Irish having foolishly voted for the European Constitution, this is symbollic of the rough treatment they are going to get from now on. If Ireland is in the way of what France wants, then Ireland will be trampled on. Cocks
We told them how it would be… they didn’t listen. Who needs yesterday’s papers?
Because we’ve always known that the continentals are f’ing cheats and our liberals want to bring their culture into this country!
contintentals out!
one race one fatherland one Volksarmee!
Nick Griffin will show us the bong eyed fat way of the nonce
An early example of Godwin’s law at work here. (Check here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law for an explanation.) Couldn’t think of an argument so called me a Nazi and follower of the bum boy Griffin.
I wrote that tongue in cheek but if you seriously look at how the French are exploiting the EU Common Agricultural policy, the Italians (led by the Mafia) and their olive oil scams, ditto for the Greeks and we begin to see that cheating is very much a trait in the EU countries.
You patheic liberals are frightened to death to even debate what is happening in the EU which is why you ran away from a referendum on the Lisbon constitution!
When’s Dave holding the Lisbon Referendum again ?
DUUUUUUUUUUHHHH!!!
You far-right nutters are forever having to correct your moronic lunacy and justify your paranoid fear of ‘continentals’ (do you mean Africans? as your idol Palin did not understand that Africa was a continent, not a country it’s easy to see how you could be confused)
I wrote that tongue in cheek, no wait, I didn’t because I’m not trying to wriggle and slither away from what I said
weasel
Guido says he is Irish, but he holidays in France. Methinks he has divided loyalties here.
Guys,
Global Warming has just been pwned. This is huge
http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2009/11/climategate.html
It may be huge but then again its bollocks. Just like the “logic” behind climate change deniers thinking
Spend your own money on the climate, don’t you fucking dare spend mine.
Or what, pencil dick?
Don’t fuck with Old Holborn.
Already am. I have dared spending your money on teh environment. So will the next Tory government. Every government of any colour will spend your hard earned money on climate change. Looks like you have already lost this one mate. Ha ha ha. It’s your climate too knob
How much money does OH have? I’ve heard that buskers on the tube can make 50p an hour…
Ahh – here’s the arsehole posting again – 2 minutes dick head will be all it takes with a bat and your head.
You pathetic little weasel.
And you too – make an orderly queue.
another pathetic posturing internet ‘hardman’ tries desperately to sound tough and fails
do us all a favour and go fuck yourself
Yeah – get lost smackhead
Yeah – go and wank off to Palin elsewhere shitmuncher
forget football – this is the biggest story
see
http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d19-Hadley-CRU-hacked-with-release-of-hundreds-of-docs-and-emails
and
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/
Of course, US insurance companies make exactly the same sort of decisions about what to pay out for. The problem in the UK isn’t that decisions are made – its that they’re made unaccountably by NICE, who have virtually no democratic accountability. Why not let NICE advise and locally elected NHS PCT governors decide?
Decisions such as this must be made by someone accountable for the desicion, maybe even the Sec of State for the big ones (to avoid accusations of ‘postcode lottery’).
The whole Raison d’etre of NICE is to take away the politically unpopular decisions from the accountable politians. Should be high on the list for Dave culling of the Quangos.
Read this;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6127514/Sentenced-to-death-on-the-NHS.html
There has already been a case where an old man was seen off by the Liverpool care pathway, but at the post mortem he turned out to have (treatable) pnuemonia, not teminal cancer.
It is very obvious that Hospitals under severe cost restraints are going to make decisions based on cost and little else.
presumably, therefore, his salary is less than £30,000 per year without any bonuses
Anything on Curry yet? No how strange, couldn’t be a Tory I suppose.
The committee chaired by Curry has come in for criticism recently for supposedly taking a sympathetic position on MPs accused of flouting the old system of allowances and expenses.
Wonder why?
Part of the problem of this emotive “death panel” phraseology is that is misses a fundemental point.
What NIHCE should be doing is using their bargaining power and scale to demand (not ask) lower prices for the drugs. If they obtain significantly lower prices, the patients live a little longer, NIHCE get a lower price and the drugs companies get revenue – everyone wins! If not, noone wins – including the drugs company who invested $bns in ‘wasted’ research.
That is exactly the problem here, as it is with most of their decisions – NICE wanted to supply this drug but could not agree a price with the vendor, despite it’s massive bargaining power as provider of 90% of (legal!) drugs sold in the UK
Why do you think the cost of healthcare in the US is so high? The majority of it is the prices of drugs supplied to each doctor individually. NICE has massive bargaining power in comparison.
True.
The problem that I see is that the drugs company is now wanting to appeal. That puts them in a very weak position.
NIHCE should turn round and work through a business model that makes sense – the £30k is too arbitrary (about ~£5k per month for the average ‘extended’ period). Also, isn’t it remarkable that the figure (as reported elsewhere) that the drugs company was asking for was just above this level??
Fucking NICE have just tried to kill me. Go to –
http://lolathebeautiful.blogspot.com/
and read my post entitled ‘Quangos Try to Kill You’. (posting the link to my poorly little blog may seem a bit precious but I cannot be arsed to post the whole saga here, and anyway it’d bore you silly).
All these bastard bureaucratic quangos either destroy your wealth – e.g. the Financial Services Authority, or they try to kill you, e.g. NICE.
NICE issues guidelines not laws.
The ultimate decision rests with the doctor who has the right and the duty to over rule the guidelines when necessary.
If all doctors did was to slavishly follow guidelines they (the doctors) would cease to have any useful purpose.
Guidelines.
No antibiotics in cases of diarrheoa and vomiting.
No antibiotics in cases of respiratory viruses.
Recommendations for antibiotics for each disease.
If these guidelines are slavishly followed, patients with Legionnaires disease, cholera and typhoid are all condemned to death.
The cheap trimethoprim recommended for first line use in urinary infections is not particularly effective and led in my case to a severe infection and five weeks off work.
No cost saving there.
As I understand it the NICE ‘guidelines’ are those that the medics have to work by. They have to follow them or they have to argue why they shouldn’t. That argument is modertaed by their PCT and NICE who may still say ‘ follow the guidelines’. The cardiologist that treated me, whom I judge to be a Very Good Bloke, was very clear that antibiotic prophylaxis was effectively banned. He was also clear that there had been consdirable professional debate among his colleagues and many did not agree with the NICE ‘guidnace’ but within the NHS had no option but to follow it.
Of course, once you’ve HAD endocarditis, all bets are off and you can have prophylatic anibiotics. At the cost, in my case, of extra damage to my heart valve.
NICE are fireproof, of course. The source of the infection is sufficiently vague to ensure that for all intents and purposes it is impossible to irrefutably attribute to the removal of the antibiotic protection. It is a classic bureaucratic stitch up.
Since I do not trust governments at all, I resent absolutely their interference in the relationship between my professional advisers and myself.
I hate to say this,but we could spend the entire national budget on the NHS but we will all still die someday.I have no idea whether NICE does its job properly but there has to be some cost/benefit analysis for new drugs.
Nice should be linked to UKFI and use the fkg QE money to buy the shares in all pharmaceutical companies. Thus make money from the drugs and then plow it back into the NHS budget for drugs. SImples
If UK PLC bought the drug companies then twenty years from now the fuckers would all be on strike for the equivilent pay of an NHS surgeon, aspirins would cost fifty quid each (when they were being produced) and we wouldn’t have developed a new drug in the intervening 20 years. Oh, and they’d ‘employ’ about two million people.
And Labour and union arseholes and bastards would be wanking on about how the drug manufacturers were a key service that could only be provided by the tax-payer.
The usual lefists make the usual fucked up perverted arguments defending a regime that can afford billions of pounds on illegal wars and billions on foreigners and fake asylum seekers and health tourists who get the best of everything for free, hey its money no object when third world immigrants need the very finest AIDS drugs we can afford, no N.I.C.E rationing for them eh? Quangocrats syphoning off millions for their gravytrain nonjobs but not enough left in the pot to treat our own people like human beings eh?
Welcome to the newlabour apartheid welcome to hell welcome to the death panels who decide if your life is worth saving or prolonging, welcome to the new hell on earth.
Are feeling alright? You seem to be frothing at the mouth.
Lets hope that you need treatment and NICE refuses it on cost grounds, then you might actually have a clue what the problem is.
I don’t have to personally experience something in order to understand it. What kind of moronic bollocks, you rightist fuckwit.
You undestand nothing it seems other than the desire to support newslavelabour death panels, I hope you do get to experience having a loved one denied treatment on cost grounds, I hope you get to feel the grief of losing a loved one who could have been around for months given extra months of life but was in fact forced to die of cancer because(and this is the sickest part)they are not considered a worthwhile investment in the perverted land of newslavelabour.
‘I don’t have to personally experience something in order to understand it…’
A Conservative spokesman said that he was happy to seize the opportunity presented by Labour’s attacks to set out his commitment to the health service, which his family came to rely on for help caring for his heavily disabled son who died earlier this year.
Mr Cameron dismissed the Labour attacks as ”political point-scoring” and stressed his party’s ”wholehearted commitment” to the principle of a health care system free at the point of delivery.
Take your trolling elsewhere dickhead unless you think Cameron and the conservaites are newslavelabour you mong
Mandela was a terrorist, his wife winnie was a murderer and torturer, facts old bean, mandela caused the death of people.
Is it coz he is black that you left wing fruitjobs love him. I bet if one of your relatives were killed by the ANC you may change your mind
Are you Guido in disguise?
Another timewarp tourist -Great news! they let Nelson out many years ago. You can fuck off now and celebrate.
Now when can you get your hands on a Goodyear or Michelin when you need one?
The ANC is well down the route to a Mugabe-esque future. First they had the AIDS-denier as President now they have the non-rapist.
The ANC constution calls for the same exciting land redistribution policies that were such a success in Zimbabwe. SA is more dangerous than Afghanistan for white folk.
It’s fucked people. White folk are not welcome in Africa. They’ve got their new best friends the Chinese in there now.
Its funny how newlabour can find the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer pounds to keep the likes of Abu Hamza with his staff of state funded carers and his family on lavish state benefits, its funny how money is no object where a convicted criminal can live in comfort with his every need catered for but our own suffering people have to go cap in hand to quangocrats living high on the hog for treatment only to be told the cupboard is bare!
The money we all pay in is lavished on hamza when he and his family should have been airlifted to Afghanistan and dumped outside camp Bastion, job done and money saved.
Its funny how money is no problem when our enemies need welfare cash and lavish housing, its funny how newlabour can fund hundreds of thousands of fake asylum seekers no expense spared isnt it?
You are a vile fascist racist piece of scum. Fuck off back under your stone.
Question to the keyboard warrior too dim to think of a name: Point out and explain the fascist comments in Cassandra’s post. All I see is someone annoyed about the preceived preferential treatment of a convicted criminal.
There we have the essence of newslavelabour, smear people as racist if we dare expose the stunning hypocrisy of treating a terrorist loving and supporting foreigner to lavish funding while denying funding to British taxpayers.
Am I a racist for shining a light on newslavelabours love of criminals? Of course most people see your annon cowardice and your ignorant kneejerk racist smears and think to themselves what a hoon.
It’s not very good, this one… You’d think Unite could afford better.
That’s right, the Tories are going to end those wars, aren’t they? I think you missed a meeting.
If this Andrew Dillon decided against any of my relatives,he would get a visit from a group of people with a particular set of skills.
Look i know she winds up the left, this pleases me, but remember people, Palin is a creationist ok……….a creationist.
i’d like to create some activity in her quim
Chortle…snort!!!
If Blair is to be believed then he too is a creationist.
If Blair is to be believed
yes, lets just leave that one there and s.l.o.w.l.y. back away
It’s a real problem. What would you do if somebody invented a cure for cancer – a single pill that would cure any kind of cancer, immediately – but each pill cost £1 billion to make? How would you decide who should get it?
I would say buy shares in the company that produced it, as they would be loaded, then when i had sold my shares,profit, and injected Brown and his wife with cancer/Aids/Black Mamba venom i woul send the original formula to India or China and then do the old spam mails out to sell it cut with panadol.
Simple. People with one billion quid would get it. Just like they get super-yachts. Or you could give the National (Health) Lottery a new twist. Every year one lucky council house cancer patient gets cured.
Disfranchisement – WIKIPEDIA
Disfranchisement (also called disenfranchisement) is the revocation of the right of suffrage (the right to vote) to a person or group of people, or rendering a person’s vote less effective, or ineffective. Disfranchisement might occur explicitly through law, or implicitly by intimidation.
“The drug does not provide enough benefit to justify its high cost.”
In the fucked up crazy marxist world of NuLabour, life itself is not seen as a “benefit”.
That’s right, only Tories care. You’re twisting words, conversely, what is the benefit to the taxpayer? Do you like paying taxes?
Ok, how much should the taxpayer fork out to prolong somebody’s life by one day on the NHS? 500 quid, 1000, 2000, 10000, 100000, 10000000? See, like it or not, a decision has to be made. You’re approach that life is priceless, is, sadly, not very realistic, which is, strangely, something that regular Guido readers have been heavily into when criticising, quite rightly, this demented government.
The sad thing is you’re on the wrong side on this issue, and it’s not Labour’s doing. If a Sec of State was making this decision, that would be far worse. NICE is not a quango, it is independent, and can make decisions that are not political. That some see that as permitting politicians to evade responsibility, that smacks of lunacy. Do you really want a tabloid war over these kinds of decisions, do you want them subject to electoral concerns?
Grow up and admit that NICE deals with reality, and that reality is not something that was invented by New Labour. There isn’t money for everything, and these decisions must be made, and surely it’s preferable to have doctors and scientists doing this?
But sure, go ahead, offer your alternative.
Hundreds of thousands are killed every year by the NHS using abortion,deliberate starvation and preventable illness.
Death Panel sums it up Guido,well done.
I was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 – the first and really only thought I had was “who is going to care for my children?”
Given that Brown has ruined our children’s financial future,I may well negotiate for the £30,000 plus to go in to their bank account (zero interest of course).
For those of you who have not experienced the dread words; “you have cancer”,wait until you do and then feel qualified to simply switch people’s life off.
Even though Guido aims to be the king of the tabloid bloggers, this post is taking the piss.
A turkey doesn’t vote for Christmas. When I, or someone close to me, need whatever latest wonder drug is not available on the NHS I’ll raise merry hell in any tabloid or blog I can find. Until that emotional time comes, reason must prevail.
Don’t be a fucking arse Guido – do you want every possible drug and every possible treatment available on the NHS regardless of cost?
If you don’t a line has to be drawn somewhere and line drawers make no friends.
You won’t like this one bit, but here goes.
Drugs used to treat a terminal illness are a waste of money.
Its a TERMINAL illness, the patient is going to die.
Harsh, but true.
I watched as my own father died of cancer over 10 years ago. The rounds of chemo, drugs, and all the other associated crap was more distressing and drawn out than it had to be.
This is my opinion based upon my experience, but I believe that if an illness is diagnosed as being terminal, then the treatment should be PALLIATIVE care.
Yes I’ve just said that I think people should die under certain circumstances, but they not being dumped by the NHS to go and crawl away and die somewhere. The pain relief is sufficient and until the doses of morpheine become very high the patient is able to put their affairs in order and spend time with their loved ones.
Yes. My brother (the nurse) tells me that most doctors and cancer specialist have fuck-all to do with chemo and all that shit when they themselves get cancer. It is a horrendously expensive exercise in prolonging folks lives for a few weeks/months. They generally feel so fucking ill from the ‘medicine’ they’d be better off and more lucid on morphine.
The side effects of the chemo “medicine” are truly crappy and soul destroying.
It might sound daft, but the one thing that my dad wanted more than anything was to enjoy a pint and have a bacon sarnie without feeling like shit.
For all the drugs and chemo stuff that he had to take, it wasn’t worth it to see him depressed, feeling ever more worse and at one point suicidal just for the sake of a few more months of life.
Those last months were crap. The treatment did not improve his quality of life, it just prolonged the inevitable.
The Tories on here who are today defending the NHS and demanding that bottomless resources be made available, well, they’re not going to engage with what the above 3 posters wrote, it contains too much truth garnered from direct personal experience. Don’t you know this is just about bashing New Labour, guys? Come on…
Without an infinite amount of resources, it is impossible to provide all life-saving (or life prolonging) treatments that science might offer.
People have always been allowed to die because it was too expensive to save them and always will.
Palin is probably too thick to understand this, but as I cannot believe that Guido is, I wonder what he’s playing at?
NICE guidelines do not of course apply to members of the Government, and nor do waiting lists; that is the most pernicious aspect of state health care.
Ever heard of finite resources? What are you saying – that anyone who could be benefited by a drug, regardless of the cost should be given it? Ever heard of our budget deficit? Come on, Guido, this is straight from Brownomics: spend, spend, spend because tomorrow someone else will have to pay the bill!
{ Of course this particular decision may be wrong – all committees, like all humans, sometimes get things wrong, BUT there is not an infinite pot of taxpayers money to pay the NHS bill. My personal, albeit partial, solution would be to halve the salaries of all doctors (currently grossly overpaid) – this would save billions for the NHS to use for drugs! }
Nice one Ian e.
While they are at cutting wages why not include the scumbag Members of Parliament.
That’s too populist – you are hiding your lack of any coherent countering argument.
Are some of u lot plain fucking stupid ? Why are some of u lot desperate for Guido to put a blog up about Curry ? Cant u read the bloody newspapers , its all there .Cupid stunts.
despite what has happened over the last year with fucking MPs and our money, this in the Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6610169/MPs-expenses-The-Tory-MP-his-mistress-and-30000-for-love-nest.html
anyone still want to vote for any of them?
Two words: Saw 6.
So, if it’s over £30,000 too bad? – Well, at least we get £29,000 a year then – more than the vast majority would be able to afford without the NHS.
The NHS has to be run on a ulilitrian basis.
Without it people would have the freedom to die either with their families in huge amounts of personal debt after a prolonged death or not have any treatment at all.
Life’s a shit house, get used it and I for one am glad we have an NHS which means I could get up to £30,000 worth of treatment I wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise.
Also:
“For those of you who have not experienced the dread words; “you have cancer”,wait until you do and then feel qualified to simply switch people’s life off.”
I have.
I concur with most people on here on this one Guido, you’re being an arse.
Jack – are you actually claiming that if we didn’t have the NHS in its current Stalinist central-planning form then the only alternative is cash in hand payment for all care our of immediate personal resources.
Where does this ideological derangement come from? It is sad and bizzare.
Of course it’s a death panel, it’s a logical consequence of the system.
a) Government steals money
b) Government doles money out
That is the bit I don’t like. It’d be better being your own death panel.
It’s a logical consequence of any system because there’s scarcity. It’s just unethical and weird having that decision taken away by force and given to some faceless bureaucrat.
It’s all very well for you and Dan Hannan to moan about the NHS, Guido, because you can presumably afford private medical insurance.
As someone in a low-to-middle-income household I’d be fucked if I lived in a USA-type private health insurance system; I wouldn’t qualify for benefits but I certainly couldn’t afford decent private healthcare.
The Curse of Jonah
http://www.times-and-star.co.uk/news/politics/pm_gordon_brown_to_visit_west_cumbria_today_1_503222?referrerPath=news/politics
Please use disinfectant hand gel provided before handling the snakes. Hawk……………………(dink).
Don’t worry, Guido isn’t being a disingenuous, illogical, simplistic arse for no reason.
This post is clearly Drudge-bait, will get him enough hits to buy a decent bottle of wine for this evening!
Blog what you believe, or what gets hits, whichever comes first.
Guido’s support of the arch-reactionary, gun-toting, anti-choice extremist Palin is a disgrace.
Fortunately for most progressive, liberal, forward-thinking Britons, no-one who shares Palin or Guido’s views will ever hold a position of power, either in Brussels or Westminster.
My child we will overcome.
Never forget our three graces .
LIES
DECEIT
INTIMIDATION
Tell Jon Cruddas his website still doesn’t fucking work.
Tell Darah Palin her brain still doesn’t fucking work.
I will, darling.
And is the drug available to those who cannot afford insurance in the United States or whose employers don’t provide it?
nope
And is the drug available to all in Germany or France, yep!
Insurance company bureaucrats never refuse to pay for treatment or turn down a patient’s policy because of the cost.
Ashton:Europe: Mandelson?
smell the rat yet?
AH (C)
Come on Mr Fawkes do try to keep up.
David Cameron is WRONG on poverty, says Lord Mandelson
Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/11/15/david-cameron-is-wrong-on-poverty-115875-21822276/
David Cameron would cut away the very public services and public investment that are the only way of guaranteeing those things.
David Cameron sees government and society as different things. That’s easy when you’re rich and can buy the services you need, when you want them. It’s easy to say charity is the answer when you know you’re never going to need it.
Government isn’t perfect – it will always need reform and improvement. We should be pushing to make public services more local and personal.
But for millions of British people government is how they get a fair deal and a clear shot at opportunity in life. David Cameron will never be a progressive so long as he doesn’t believe that.
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the PR executive in David Cameron knows that he can say one thing and mean another. And nobody will notice until it’s too late.
If Mandelson says it, it MUST be true!
Who elected Mandelson to his current office, what was his majority when he fought the election to gain high office?
Newslavelabour, we save time and money by cutting out the messy and time consuming business of elections, they might go the wrong way and after all what do the ordinary proles know about anything eh?
Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech has set out the next steps in Building Britain’s Future.
Central to the speech was that government can be a force for good – to secure the economic recovery and build a fairer society.
Our vision of the future for Britain is optimistic – Britain has great reserves of strength and talent which can be unlocked.
On the economy we will bring in measures to strengthen economic growth and lock in the recovery, laying the foundations for the green, digital economy of the future, as the same time as we take the tough choices necessary to halve the deficit.
We will also ensure responsibility from bankers and secure financial stability, so that greed and risk taking can never again damage the living standards of Britain’s families.
We will reform and renew our public services – building on the achievements of the last 12 years to guarantee that people across the country get the high standards of health and education they deserve.
A new National Care Service will be built, securing for older people – who have given so much to their country – the right to be properly looked after in old age.
Our Democracy will be renewed. By pushing on with political and constitutional reform we will rebuild trust in a modern, democratic Britain.
Britain faces a choice between a Labour government with an optimistic view of the future of the country – believing that government can be a force for good in securing prosperity, caring for the vulnerable and building public services for everyone – and a Conservative vision for Britain which is fundamentally pessimistic – about a Britain that is broken and with only an age of austerity to look forward to.
The Conservative approach is to abandon the responsibility of government; to let the recession take its course; and to leave people to sink or swim.
http://www.labour.org.uk/home
All promises of jam tomorrow.
My Mother, God rest her soul, used to say ‘ Don’t follow the muck cart and expect a wedding’.
Too long,
I’m the only Goebbels for Gordon here
God you’re even more pompous than me.
That is all.
Ctrl C followed by Ctrl V gets very boring after a while.
Make yourself useful for a change and get the kettle on.
Oh dear -you believe what you are told? I am so sorry for you.
Labour=force for good -very amusing.
How will all this legislation make it through Parliament before the election? -ah yes the much loved Parliament Act. How remiss of me. Very democratic.
Remind me how the new care service will be funded? -I see,robbing disable pensioners to pay for it. Excellent.
Democracy renewed? I think you will find it’s always been there but is suppressed by control freaks like you. What sort will you be renewing exactly?
‘Reserves of talent to be unlocked? Glory be -could some of the talent be put into governing the country properly?
One final point: What did happen to the knowledge economy?
‘We can be optimistic because, through our pioneering and innovative private-public partnership, we can release new energy to build both a knowledge economy and a knowledge society’
The Chancellor at the time seemed quite certain it would happen,so why do we have so many unemployed just now? After all that was 9 years ago.
What limit of other peoples’ money would you put on treatment that gives 6 months more life to a liver cancer sufferer, Guido?
This treatment costs £18,000 for that 6 months. You can add to that the other ongoing costs of caring for an advanced cancer patient, since they’ll still be around and requiring all the care they were receiving before.
The taxpayers’ pockets are not infinitely deep. A limit has to be set somewhere.
Of course, if you’re on the wrong side of the limit, you could do what they do in the U.S. and cough up your own cash. If I had terminal cancer and wanted to extend my life by 6 months, I’d probably look at selling the house in order to do so.
I noticed the guy on the news last night had a pretty nice pad. He’d have plenty of cash left to buy something smaller or in a less pricey area.
I could never understand why folk who required a hip replacement would just lie there, housebound, for two years or more waiting for an NHS operation. I believe a private operation costs about 2,000 quid. Fucking hell – have they not got a car they could sell. Or just get a fat cash advance on their credit card and then pay it off stacking shelves in Tescos?
No. Their attitude seemed to be ‘I’ve paid my stamp – I’m entitled to a free operation’. For fucks sake. Lying there, rotting for two years just ‘cos you don’t want to reach into your pocket for a couple of thousand quid. Have they no sons – no daughters, no fucker in the family who would want to see their dear old dad up and about? Naaah. Guess not.
Eejits.
because too many people have been suckling at the teet of the state for too long.
There are too many idiots wanting to blame someone else for their own inactions.
The “i’ve paid my stamp” brigade haven’t worked out that NI is tax and not, as they believe, a savings account.
I feel absolute, abject disappointment when I see how many people have bought the Emporer’s New Clothes.
:(
Guido is perhaps looking for a seat on the board of one of the private companies that increasingly service the ’state owned’ nhs statements like these will endear him to them.
The point is though that how much is spent on nip tucks and tit jobs,sex changes,liposuction,gastric bands,compensation payouts and dare I say it again, the host of diseases brought in from immigrants?
In that context why should someone who contributes all their lives be denied a fucking thing.
Virtually nothing is spent by the NHS on the cosmetic surgery you describe.
Gastric bands are a relatively effective way of treating a fatty who might (since fatness is a cause of liver cancer) otherwise go on to develop liver cancer and start demanding this drug, probably as their “‘uman right”.
Your “diseases brought in from immigrants” is as ill-informed as it is illiterate.
The NHS does do all those things I described.
Self inflicted self indulgent injury gets rectified by the NHS all the time.
And the increase in cases of Aids amongst the drug free hetrosexual population of this country is mainly due to immigration.
Why should a tax paying person be denied treatment so enough money is available to pay for a non tax paying tub of lard who eats Wotsits all fucking day get a muzzle?
If there is a cap on treatment, base it on what an individual has contributed.
That is fair is it not?
it’s hypothicated taxation and won’t be used on the NHS for the same reason it isn’t used on education, military spending & almost anything else
I don’t have any children so I’m not paying for education until I do
I don’t like Trident or Afghanistan so I’m not going to pay the taxes that fund it. I want to personally earmark where my taxes go etc.
doesn’t work like that I’m afraid
you pay taxes and you choose where they go by choosing the party to govern on the basis of their manifesto which sets out their spending priorities. you don’t get to pay taxes and allocate the spending yourself.
but since you are obssessed with Aids and scapegoating immigrants I doubt the complexities of our progressive tax system matter too much anyway
It should be about how much you put in that determines what you are entitled to get out.
Sick immigrants are a good example of the current unfairness and I will not try and make a point with one arm up my back just to suit you.
SO17,
Here’s a question for you:
You are the surgical registrar in A&E.
You have just diagnosed an expensively-dressed, white English man with acute appendicitis. He tells you that his boyfriend gave him a shot of heroin at home earlier and it has helped with the pain somewhat.
In the next cubicle, an African from a country where HIV is common has identical signs and symptoms. He can’t speak English. His wife and two children are waiting outside.
The problem has potentially fatal complications for both patients.
Which patient most deserves you to let his appendix rupture?
13eastie
save money and let them both die
Looks like this ones blown up in yoru face Guido!
Fuck off you nothing
Hey! Guido likes it on his face. Mmmmm, nice and creamy!
Gudio agreeing with Sarah Palin over the NHS! This blog is now irrelevant.
Starved any patients today love?
Only the ones she hasn’t ODed on morphine for NICE.
Only your fat wife
Typical NHS freak! I thought the socialised NHS served everybody equally, rich or poor, them wot can talk proper as well as them that can`t, not just the benefit scroungers and underclass. What the hell are we paying for. Palin is right on this one.
Palin is an anti-socialist, neo-imperialist reactionary. Just like Thatcher and her heir, David Cameron.
Ed Miliband shows that “Cameron’s rhetoric on poverty may sound new, but his prescriptions go straight back to Thatcher” in this excellent article.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/13/airbrushing-the-tory-past
“The difference between Thatcherism and Cameronism may be that rhetorically, one says poverty doesn’t matter, and the other says it does. But let’s not be taken in: there is no difference when it comes to prescriptions.
This is his project: to build a reactionary consensus. By convincing people government is the problem, he builds support for retrenchment and cuts. A return to the 1980s by the back door. It is insidious, it is clever and it might work. We have been warned. It really is up to people of progressive persuasion to decide where they stand.”
The Tories are the party of the few. We are the party of the many.
Many chumps.
Fabian
Always remember our three graces
LIES
DECEIT
INTIMIDATION
nice try but we know who exactly who Cameron models himself on
small typo crept in there too
you meant party of the MONEY
specifically all those lovely hundreds of billions given to the few Banks and Bankers
BTW what’s progressive about a failed neocon quagmire like Afghanistan ? Ask Broon or one of his minions next time they give you your talking points and spin
day off yesterday?
you do talk bollocks!
the country is bankrupt!!!!!!!!
guess who has been in charge for the last 12 years??????
no-i am not a tory!
and mandy? a real ‘man’ of the people?
have you got a £20,000 watch fabian?
how many dodgy deals?
She is not all bad, then!
“anti-socialist”
Wait, this is supposed to be a bad thing?
Just a thought – could a £200bn budget deficit also be triggering support for retrenchment in the public finances?
Brown screwed up the economy. End of.
The sad reality is that if you have a terminal illness that cannot be cured then you have a terminal illness. You will die (we all do in the end) and the only questions are when and in what way.
The world is also full of drugs companies pushing their latest wares. These are often developed with the best of intentions. Some prove wonderful but for many more scientific evidence shows they have a limited effect or only give a benefit in a very few cases.
So if the budget is limited do we spend it on giving dying people a very expensive placebo of little real benefit to the vast majority of them or do we spend that money on other treatments that may cure many more or make their lives so much better?
Of course none of this applies of its a new treatment for breast cancer where whatever the cost or however little it does a number of female cabinet members will insist on it being bought because there are votes in it from the client groups
i think most people would accept the reality of terminal illness but for one fact.
Would an MP be denied the treatment because it was too expensive?
Yes. NICE don’t know the names of the people who need the drug.
Idiot
Parliament grows fat on nieve muppets like you.
How so?
It’s probably also worth pointing out that the significant “risk factors” (i.e. “causes”) of hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) are all self-inflicted, such as liver cirrhosis caused by alcohol abuse or hepatitis B/C, diabetes – especially in conjunction with heavy drinking, obesity, and anabolic steroid abuse.
Whoever these people are, they’ve obviously had a wonderfully fulfilling life. I’m not sure I should be paying for the consequences, though…
Very soon you will be able to read in the papers of the successful transition to full-on Mugabe-esque economics of South Africa.
The thing that must really kill you bedwetters is that Ian Smith and Enoch Powell were right.
The blacks will just fuck it up.
And they have.
I hope I can count on your support for my Children in need challenge.I’m going to be eating as many Viagara tablets as I can in an hour,so far I’ve raised………….
7 inches
booom tish
Why is Cameron eating Viagra?
Everyone seems to be so bad tempered on this site today.
Things could be far worse – after all,you could be saddled with;
An unelected Prime Minister
An unelected “President” of Europe
An unelected “Foreign Minister” of Europe
An unelected Deputy Prime Minister
A law breaking Leader of the House of Commons
A Justice Secretary who wants to welcome another 10 million “auslanders’.
Just imagine how angry you would be if THAT lot happened?
Is this the effect
Everyone seems to be so bad tempered on this site today. . . . Things could be far worse
Now just listen to what that nice person says, and calm down dears.
We have a range a services to meet every need of those in distress. Clown-sling (The house religion of Noo_Boring_Liars – until Princess Polytwaddle and the burqa brigade arrive), and we have drugs that will put you out of your mind or misery.
Also, infected hospitals to finish the job.
Just Trust Us – and remember – we even call the conglowmerates ‘Trusts’ – isn’t that clever?
The truth is these nuclear drugs cost £25,000 plus per treatment per patient.
Well if the average income earner (today say £25k) pays all his NI contributions all his working life you have an immediate shortfall. That’s before we start talking of all the other “benefits” available to all of us.
The following question needs to be asked:
If the family of a dying patient were told their relative’s life could be extended by between 6 months and 5 years but they would need to sell their home to pay for it, would they do it? The answer I suspect is 95% plus would say “No”.
Why therefore should the taxpayer be required to pay? Sadly we have reached a watershed for all in the UK.
We simply cannot always have what we want, when we want, when it suits us. There simply isn’t the income to pay for it.
Personally i wish I could just opt out of almost everything the State has to offer. They charge too much as it is, and all the taxes are still going up.
If I’m going to be treated in a hospital then sorry but to be brutal, the drugs are same everywhere, so please can I be looked after by my own kind, speaking my language, understanding and respecting my culture. Is that too unreasonable?
Most people don’t have these drugs. A few do. We don’t know in advance. It is called insurance.
NATIONAL INSURANCE, I presume you mean? Yes hard working legally employed employees pay insurance. Many also purchase additional private health insurance.
Incorrect, depending on the post code lottery, many people are given these drugs by the NHS
Quite right too. Drug companies shouldn’t be allowed to profiteer at the expense of the taxpayer.
If you’re product’s too expensive, then reduce the costs or go out of business.
Dillon is a bureaucrat motivated by bean counting rather than medical knowledge and could be more appropriately named Matt Dillon.Research and breakthroughs in medical treatment may be expensive to pursue and resources are finite but the treatment of terminally ill cancer patients with new drugs which prolong their lives and quality of life is an essential part of research and progress toward increasing prolongation,remission,and cure.A proportion of the N.H.S.budget should be devoted to this.There should be fexibilities in costings for patients.Rigidly prescribed limits will hinder medical progress.
A proportion is. We just can’t devote all of it to it!
If you criticise the system you need to describe an alternative. If you spend more on cancer patients, where will you make a cut? Who will die so that the cancer patient can live longer?
Of course, we know the answer. You cut the bloated NHS bureaucracies, stop wasting time and money meeting ever-changing, arbitrary targets and avoid grandiose projects such as the IT scheme and the Tamiflu fiasco. Mr Dillon cannot influence that, howver. His job is to maximise the beenfit of spending on drugs.
What about boob jobs? ffs
the only boob here is you
Browns support of the treacherous lying murdering bastard war criminal anti-christ extremist TONY B LIAR is a disgrace.
I admit i am a total shithead, i am the arsehole who writes all those comments in the margins of library books because i really think you want to read all the shit swilling around in my thick skull, i am one of those silly labour wankers with a beard but no moustache.
Fabian Solutions? Or Final Solutions? Answers to the usual address.
Godwin’s Law again. You are fucking lazy can’t think for yourself.
Let us hope that Mr Dillon nor any member of his family suffer from cancer in the future or he might just change his mind on the provision of such drugs…….
£3,000 a month to extend your life by only 6 months doesn’t really seem worth it when that money could be invested to make real long lasting change to those who are still alive.
The cost of the treatment’s should focus debate on the people charging that amount for their drugs as opposed to NICE who are simply the purse string holders.
If we had a private health care system, which would see many cancer suffers go bankrupt or not get health insurance, I doubt many would go for blowing £18,000 to extend their lives by 6 months.
I think it is quite amazing that the state will spend up to £30,000 to deliver just one additional QALY (quality adjusted life year), available universally to us all. We have to be very rich for the state to be able to afford to spend that much money on us. They can’t afford that in most countries on the planet.
Let us remember that Palin is arguing against the extension of the public provision of health care. She is pointing at an uncomfortable but necessary part of any public funding device, (rationing the available fund) in order to argue for a system in which the health care people get depends much more upon how much money they have.
Actually, the US already spend a greater % share of its (larger) GDP on PUBLIC SPENDING on healthcare, than we do, mostly under the medicare and medicade programmes, and us access to these funds to ensure free emergency room care available to all.
As it happens they don’t spend it very well, but that is not an argument for extending the system until it is fixed.
This drug seems to have significant benefit not just in extending life, but also improving quality of life. Unfortunately the criteria for recommendation is just based on life extention. The chap on the radio yesterday from NICE seemed to be unaware of the qualitive benefits of the drug and appeared to leave the door open to a review if the benefits could be shown to be more that just quantity of life. I hope that they have worked out the relative cost of pallative care for those who are treated with this drug and those that are not.
The total number of potential patients in the UK is 600, and the current cost is £50K per patient. Therefore, the total potential cost is £30m. Given the cost of drugs is linked more to their creation rather than their production it would seem to be rather overpriced. As the current cap is around £30k per year, I wonder if the manufacturer would rather £20m a year or nothing.
Alternatively, GB could cancel the MoD bonus of £47m and spend the money on this instead……
Don’t forget that the drug companies are very good at whipping up public support for their products. They do this in very blatant ways in the US, more subtly here. Whenever you read about a campaign to spend zillions on the new wonder drug, there is a Big Pharma salesperson pulling levers in the background.
Seth
Therapies are assessed in terms of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY’s) by NICE. This measure takes into account both quality of life and mean survival.
Nexavar IS palliative therapy.
Sir Bill is quite right about the drug companies. The know perfectly well how NICE operates and can be relied upon to factor this into their pricing models.
Guido – you ignorant f*ck.
how about giving everybody a donkey to look after, if you extrapolate this, you will realise that it will solve the financial chrisis
The price of Donkeys has fallen dramatically of late.
I know of a chap that took a couple of foals to market in Ireland, and usually they’d sell for a good price.
The ass has fallen out of the Donkey market.
it’s only a matter of time before the British public backs intelligent neocon Politicians of the calibre of Palin and finally demands to get rid of the NHS!!
like
fuck
and Mr Cameron knows it
Someone I know in the US told me about a young work colleague of his who had to divorce his wife on her death bed because he had used up all his insurance, savings etc on paying for her cancer treatment. Once he divorced her she became eligible for Medicare.
Sad but happens an awful lot in the ‘Land of the Free”. I think the figure is that 70% of bank.rupt.cies in the US are due to unpaid medical bills.
The tying of insurance to employment also means that if your child gets sick you can’t change your job.
Perhaps even sadder is that none of the others in the office could see anything wrong with the situation.
The bankruptcy figure is bogus factoid promoted by the left. Bad study. Read it. Not at all impressed.
Bankrupts tend to have medical bills more than say, rent or car bills because once you have had the care, they can’t repossess it. So which debtor do you tell to go swivel!
This one over-quoted study provides no actual evidence that medical bills cause bankruptcy.
Possibly one of the most moronic comments I’ve ever seen on this blog (one I usually read and enjoy).
I presume your solution is that the NHS budget should be infinite Guido? Or maybe all the drug companies should give away their drugs for free.
Come on, lets hear your solution to the problem of limited resources and expensive drugs. I’m sure with your massive experience in the NHS you’re perfectly placed to comment.
Or you could just shut the hell up and be glad that when you get liver disease you’ll get free treatment, despite the fact its self inflicted.
Right shit for brains how about HIV being self inflicted because men stick their dicks up the dirty shit chutes of 14 year old boys or stick Heroin into their body using dirty needles? Why should I pay for their treatment that could go on for the rest of their lives? Let the fags die. What about all the Aids riddled Hoons who turn up at Dover and get free treatment?
What about the thick Hoons who get into fights on a Saturday night then end up in casualty being treated FOR FUCKING FREE?
What about people who play sport then injure themselves and get treated for free?
Most people go through life not using the NHS except perhaps when something like Liver cancer gets them and in most cases this cancer is NOT caused by drinking you wanker.
Better still scrap the NHS and let people buy their own healthcare.
Ms Palin makes my winkle feel funny
someone call a doctor!!!!
Absolutely agree! The comment about death panels is ludicrous and totally misleading. Obviously, unless there is an infiniite health budget, there has to be selections of what can be afforded.
Tell you what Guido – how much do you think people are willing to pay for an INFINITE amount of money to be spent on the NHS?
This has to be one of the most stupid and deranged submissions by Guido I have ever seen. And I often agree with him on many things!
this was indeed an epic fail
but there are a couple of wingnuts running around shouting and trying to drum up support for Guido’s Palin love and NHS hate
the UK is not the US
Bush was mocked & disliked by most of the public here not just a few loony leftists. Palin is no different
Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks this is utterly ridiculous. Would be nice to see some justification from Guido, but at the end he’s clearly not thought about it beyond a sudden reactionary comment on something he doesnt understand.
So should men who get HIV/Aids from sticking their cock up some shit stained arse get free drugs for life? They make that choice, so why should they get hundreds of thousands of pounds in free care and others not?
Stop fucking your sister, she’s only 2 moron!
++McDoom Watch++
The whole fooking bunch of ZNL cabinet hoons are stalking round Nottingham this minute. The security is awesome. You just cannot get close. Especially me.
Save yourselves. I will report on the coming curse as best I can, assuming I survive.
I say we lift-off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Stick to politics, Guido.
At least you know something about that.
Why don’t you stick to fucking small boys like your other Liebour mates?
Why don’t you stick to rimming farm animals like your other far-right mates?
Stop fucking your sister, she’s only 2 moron!
keep your sick fantasies to yourself you disgusting little troll
Sp**do shorts comments have been deleted for less but he didn’t agree with Guido which is the only reason your trolling of this blog with about 10 sock puppets has been allowed
get this ignorant fucker off my blog
you have been wanred
Enjoying watching the Labour activists wail. 60 years of existence post-war and what has it got to show for it? An unmanageable behemoth that bumps you off if you cost more than an arbitrary amount set by a Labour-luvvie bureaucrat in an office in Whitehall after his two bottles and a line of coke lunch.
yeah! the NHS is clearly doomed because a few far right bloggers don’t like it
not
Who said it was doomed? The NHS is here to stay. Or don’t you want that? Are you a traitor to the cause? I may just report you to HAPPY for that.
I could understand if this drug was a cure, but it’s not. If all it does is delay the inevitable, then surely £30,000+ a year could be better spent?
Perhaps the Final Solution is best,and it could be taken further.Harold Shipman saved the N.H.S. a lot of money.
Whats the difference between Harold Shipman and Tony Blair? At least Shipman did something about the NHS waiting lists….
We are all just delaying the inevitable for ourselves. Think about it.
Fuck off Hain, you waste of oxygen.
I was too good ‘em. They didn’t wanna be overshadowed.
Fraulein AngelDust says:
Vee hav von ze var after all, britisher pigs.
Vee hav von RumpyPumpy as our stooge, and YOU vill do vot ve vant.
Mr. Prezza of Scott, a Noo_Lie_Bore Illumination says:
You seen the tits on that German Sausage?
Phwoorrrr!!!!
Wouldn’t mind reccernoiterin them!!!
Phwoorrrr!!!!
Anyone got a pie? . . . pasty? . . . . sandwich . . ? . . .anything . . . ?
The schwanzwürstchen go down particularly well with Euro M.P.s
I havnt checked all the previous posts, so if someone has mentioned it i apologise, but has anyone experienced the Pathway to Death procedure. Like NICE it is a cheap way of getting rid of patients who dont fit into the ‘in out in three days’ routine. Basically old people with a mental disability, are put in a side room with the door shut (keeps down the noise of their moans). They are then denied food or drink or drips or any other procedure until suprise they die. If you live close you can stay with them and keep their lips moist and brush their hair and show compassion, but dont bet on the staff doing it. If you live in Cornwall and your mother is in Newcastle then she is going to die a lonely painful death denied any comfort. Starved to death. WELCOME TO BELSEN IN THE NHS
When you compare the Nazis of the Loony Right with New Labour of the loony left,in many respects you’ve come full circle.
Guido and Sarah Palin (what a pair!) of course feel to appreciate that “Death Panels” also exist in the US – its just that are made up of Insurance Companies and lawyers who decide whether patients are entitled to continuing insurance cover or the extent of the cover provided – and as a whole they are not open to public scrutiny like NICE.
It is a sad fact of any medical system public or private that they have limited resources and someone has to make decisions about how such resources are employed or not employed.
Hope this flooding doesn’t get worse or all the M.P.s and Baronesses will start floating to the top and spreading disease,putting more pressure on N.H.S.resouces.
At least make your comments funny
no chance of that
Why is billions of pounds in taxpayers money spent on tubercolosis and aids treatment for foreigners who pour into Britain for free healthcare, free houses, and welfare benefits?
Fuck off Mr Griffin there’s a good chap
Got any figures for that? Any proof at all? From te figures that i have read “foreigners” pay more in tax than they take out in services. Its the lazy fuckers on the dole who are draining the NHS of money.
Reactionary twat
I gave you a good example in Mitcham which you ignored.
5 women infected by 1 immigrant with Aids.
How many immigrants must we have just to pay for him and his victims?
Immigration does not stack up in monetery terms even at best, when you add in crime and terrorism well it is truely a fucked up exercise.
I didn’t ask for some random example you picked out of the Merton Gazette, i was wondering if he had any figures.
Using that random example is like me proving my point by saying that i know an immigrant who pays his fair share of taxes and has never used benefits or the NHS!
BNP scum
‘BNP Scum’ now thats what I call reactionary.
It’s called humanity – you should try it sometimes
If we didn’t spend £4.5 Billion on the war in Afghanistan in just the last 12 months then perhaps we could offer people needing drugs to prolong their lives and/or other services to maintain their quality of life and dignity for as long as they see fit. I have first hand experience of a close family member having terminal cancer and the transition from prolonging live to causing pain and suffering is very blurred. Services rely too much on charity, they are hard to find, often too late, and lacking in dignity and care. Prolong life by all means but there comes a time when enough is enough. Let the patient decide but give them a choice.
If money can be found to house suspected terrorists, house and feed the feral feckless, offer driving lessons in Third World countries, ensure those in the HoL stay accustomed to their pampered lives, bail out the wealthy bankers, ensure that our MP’s have big plasma TV’s and full fridges then, I suppose, we are in an ideal position as a country to cut back some of these extravagancies and direct money to those who need it more.
I’m the ONLY one the country can trust.
Horrifying!
But there’s another aspect to bear in mind. A Drug Company knows it will price its product out of the British market if it charges over £30K for a years treatment.
But the EU does not allow companies to prevent parallel trade, so there is a limit to how much inter-country prices and differ.
Does anyone know what we would save per year if we:
1) Brought home our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq
2) Withdrew from the EU, UN, NATO, WTO, IMF and World Bank
???
possibly even more than Liebour spent on the incompetent Banks and Bankers
But not as much as they waste on the NHS.
they wasted enough money on you
innit?
10.06pm, you are a thief.
do not steal my name.
licence revocation has been activated.
fuck off TwAT you rimmer
Once again dude. Stick to England. You’re embarrassing yourself. Unsubscribing from your RSS feed right now. Goodbye.
Bye.
Yes Ms Palin
Guido, that post was beneath you.
As I’m sure you must perfectly well appreciate, the NHS does not have infinite amounts of money to spend. Or to put it another way, if you fund the liver cancer treatment, which patients are you not going to treat? If you have a better way of deciding which treatments get funded and which don’t other than cost-effectiveness, then please share it with us.
In the meantime, I’d say that NICE are doing a pretty good job.
What a braindead post Guido – scrapping the bottom of the barrel
I don’t have a problem with £30k. Its more than most people earn. If we spent more than that (where’s the limit?) on an ageing population we’d be even more bankrupt than we already are. The demographic timebomb has been known about for decades – Drucker wrote about it in the 1980’s. Ashame Thatcher, Blair et al. have done too little, too late.
Surely “Mrs” would be more appropriate than “Ms” as she is a married conservative woman and not a feminazi lesbian harpy.
When NICE was created as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, I suggested the acronym stood for, National Institute for Cynical Economics.
I suppose since they added the “Health” bit it should be now be, Horribly Cynical Economics.
“If the panel determines that a “quality year of life” will cost the NHS more than £30,000, you are dead…”
Yep, but in the good ole caring US of A everyone gets the medical care they want no matter what the cost. Well spotted Guido. And bodies are not left floating in flood waters. And the police don’t shoot anyone trying to flee from a natural disaster. God bless the compassionate United States.
A great many US healthcare insurers stop paying once the cost of treatment exceeds 2 years of premiums. Most people in the US, who are paying double what we do in PAYE on healthcare, would be substantially better off putting equivalent funds in a savings account than funding insurers who won’t cover pre-existing conditions and will cut off funding if you don’t die or get cured fast enough.
Unlike in the simplified world view of Glenn Beck and Palin like to paint of healthcare in the UK, private medicine and health insurance is alive and well in this country. Anyone who’s put a little money by can go private rather than wait, or they can take a full coverage plan and bypass the NHS completely. Maybe it seems unfair that people who have provided for their own care should pay for the NHS, but I’d rather make my contribution than live in first world country that lets its own citizens die of treatable conditions in numbers that equate to fifteen September 11th attacks every year.
The actions of NICE are as grotesque, as they were during previous cancer treatment uproars. Thing is, these decisions tend to ultimately fail in the face of public and political pressure, whereas when a private insurer refuses a treatment, no force on Earth will compel them to change their minds.
If you think there is a “full coverage” PMI plan in the UK you are mistaken.
Palin? Seriously? I know you cater to an audience most of whom require daily watering but has it really come to this?
PALIN IS RIGHT!
FAR RIGHT AND NUTTIER THAN SQUIRREL SHIT!
We should call the NICE decision very correct. These patients are going to die anyway, just a bit later having expended several thousand pounds so what Guido would you cut to ensure that they have a few extra months? Remove an intensive care cot, perhaps, and condemn a baby to never having the chance of a life?
So how should we describe the expert panel of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which decided that patients will be denied a new cancer drug on the NHS under draft guidelines, because it is too expensive?
The same as we would describe a medical system that denies the same drugs to those who have no money?
Brown : Cocks Out Of Secretaries You must all get up to cockermouth theres a real photo opp up there !
i hope cameron gets, and then all of you who use the NHS will be fucked.hehe
“If the panel determines that a “quality year of life” will cost the NHS more than £30,000, you are dead…”
And the alternative is what? Do you think that private health insurance companies will handle the provision of expensive drugs/treatments any better? How does that fit with making profit, and it’s not as if the death of a policy holder who is only a drain on a private health insurer is going to cause much in the way of tears, is it?
Or should you kick in 30k a year of your own money?
I’ve lived in the UK and the US, the UK system, for all its faults, is infinitely better. Try getting treatment in the US after you’re over 30 and everything is met with a claim that it’s a ‘pre-existing condition’, or where health benefits are dependent upon your job, so that people get sick, are fired, and then lose their health benefits.
You just don’t know what you’re talking about once again, and you’re letting your hardon for Sarah Palin cover the fact you’ve got no Westminster inside skinny anymore.
Are you kidding???
Guido broke the shocking expose of a conservative candidate no-one has heard of’s wedding pictures, the Sun’s thoughts on the X-Factor and that his blackberry is broken
You don’t get hard-core investigative reporting like that from the liberal elites
It’s “Glazing” you fucknut.
To be fair, he was first to scoop the fact his Blackberry was broken…
It’s “Glazed” you fuckwit.
It’s “Glazed” you fuckwit.
Well said. Guido would be the first to complain if he thought the NICE quango was being too free and easy at dishing out drugs paid for by our money.
Further, NICE don’t decide ‘who will die’, they decide what the guidelines should be for who receives treatment. It may just as well be called ‘a life panel’, but that would not be hysterical enough. Still, many of the Guido regulars appear to be able to reconcile the low-tax position of GF with the ‘money no object’ thrust of this post.
Yes, Guido you are right. NICE (hahaha!) is Britains very own death panel.
If your treatment costs more than they say it should, and your tax ravaged savings won’t let you go private, then you are DEAD.
I’ve never understood why so many people claim to have faith in such Stalinist structures as the NHS.
It treats the public like so much livestock. If – in their eyes – you are too expensive to fix, no matter how much you may have paid in with your taxes – then it’s the knackers for you. What’s ‘caring’ about that?
Is this the same Sarah Palin who thought Africa was a county ?
When pulled up on it she claimed her staff hadn’t briefed her properly.
Obviously a person with an extensive grasp of European social and health policy
I recently wrote about this on my blog. When you do the maths £30,000 equates to…
…two thirds of Speaker Bercow’s home refurbishment bill
…£576 per week (equal to Margaret Beckett’s hanging basket bill or one-third of a duck island)
…£82.19 per day
…£3.42 per hour
…6p per minute (equal to a minute’s phonecall from BT)
…0.5p per breath
…0.1p per second
By contrast they pay NICE analysts £39,000 p.a.
It’s so wrong it hurts!
Ho ho, this is an entertaining place. Has anyone mentioned yet that we need to get over the delusion that we can or should keep people alive forever with medical science? Any society that decided it would spend the majority of its resources (because that’s how it would end up if the drugs companies got their way) keeping people alive for a few years longer would soon collapse on itself.
If your relative lived till 90 instead of 92 because of an NHS decision I can understand why you’d feel upset. But death is part of life, and it has to be faced sometime, and perhaps you should focus on the fact that they lived to 90 instead of 70 with the help of lifelong free medicine.
Yup the NHS stinks, I would guess if you took the real cost and divided that between the people who should be entitled to use it (no illegal immigrants, gypsies etc) then you could get private cover and change. It does not work, the cleaners are overpaid and often careless, the admin is out of control, it is dangerous. In Truro the NHS hospital is next to a private one, one has had no MSRA infection, the other has killed several patients. I moved to Canada, their health service is provincial not national, it is not perfect but heaps better than UK, but those with the money, for now, go to the USA because it is better.
So gypsies should be denied hospital care? This sort of thing was tried 70 years ago in another large European country, and we all know what a delightful society that was.
[...] or punch ourselves in the face until our fists bleed, but Alan has found us a gem of a comment from Guido Fawkes (Honestly, don’t even read the article itself, or if you do, don’t discuss it here). It [...]