NHS TO BRITS: GO BLIND IN ONE EYE BEFORE WE GIVE YOU ANTI-BLINDNESS DRUG

AND THE BRITS ARE RIGHTLY OUTRAGED AT THE "National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence" ["NICE"]:

BBC:

Steve Winyard, of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), said he was "outraged" by the guidance.

"It ignores the overwhelming body of evidence that these new treatments are cost-effective and have the potential to halve the number of people going blind each year," he said.

"It is simply unacceptable that only a small minority of patients within England and Wales will have access to these ground-breaking drugs.

"NICE must re-consider and show that it makes its decisions based on cost-effectiveness rather than simply cost containment."

Tom Bremridge, chief executive of the Macular Disease Society, said: "Limiting the treatment options to 20% of patients who would benefit is unjustifiable, and allowing one eye to go blind before treating the second eye is cruel and totally unacceptable."

TIMES UK:

Thousands of people face severe loss of sight after a decision by the health watchdog to deny two leading treatments to NHS patients.

The drugs Lucentis and Macugen have been shown to be the most effective means of halting the onset of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the only treatable form of the most common cause of blindness in Britain.

The condition affects about 250,000 people and claims 26,000 new sufferers each year. It damages the central part of the retina called the macula and leaves one in ten sufferers blind.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has been under intense pressure to approve the drugs. Its draft guidance recommends that Macugen should not be used at all on the NHS in England and Wales, while Lucentis is recommended only for a small group of patients who have already gone blind in one eye and whose disease is progressing in their second.

UK GUARDIAN:

The Royal College of Ophthalmologists said that the draft ruling, from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), was "completely unacceptable". It meant that only patients already in effect blind in one eye because of the condition wet age-related macular degeneration would be able to get the newest and most effective drug, Lucentis.

Only 20% of those people whom the drug could help, those with the fastest progressing form of the disease, would get it at all via the NHS. Yet, doctors warned, half of the remainder of patients would reach the same stage of the condition within a year. Critics were also unhappy that a second drug, Macugen, was ruled out for use in the NHS.

The Royal National Institute for the Blind accused Nice of allowing 20,000 people in the UK, the number diagnosed with the condition each year, to go blind.

THIS PROVES - ONCE AGAIN - THAT SO-CALLED "UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE" FUNDED BY TAXPAYERS AND ADMINISTERED BY THE GOVERNMENT IS A DISASTER EVERYWHERE.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT GETS TO DECIDE WHAT'S COST EFFECTIVE FOR EVERYONE.

IT IS INSANE TO DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT HERE IN THE USA.

YET THAT'S WHAT THE DEMS WANT TO DO. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

DON'T FALL FOR IT.