If you are NICE, six months of life is worth £15,000, or about $22,750

I have always asked the following question, in the context of our health care system- "How much profit should one person make from another person's pain?"

The NYT has an excellent article on this topic, although the headline could be somewhat misleading- The Evidence Gap British Balance Benefit vs. Cost of Latest Drugs. The author, Gardiner Haris, writes about a person in the U.K. who has kidney cancer that has progressed to the lung. "A clinical trial showed that the pill, called Sutent, delays cancer progression for six months at an estimated treatment cost of $54,000. But at that price, Mr. Hardy’s life is not worth prolonging, according to a British government agency, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The institute, known as NICE, has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life. " Mr. Harris then goes on to say that "For years, Britain was almost alone in using evidence of cost-effectiveness to decide what to pay for. But skyrocketing prices for drugs and medical devices have led a growing number of countries to ask the hardest of questions: How much is life worth? For many, NICE has the answer. Top health officials in Austria, Brazil, Colombia and Thailand said in interviews that NICE now strongly influences their policies." Further, “All the middle-income countries — in Eastern Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East and all over Asia — are aware of NICE and are thinking about setting up something similar,” said Dr. Andreas Seiter, a senior health specialist at the World Bank.

A key question to ask is - why are drugs, medical devices, and other related stuff priced at such painfully high bleeding levels? The pharma industry's answer is that the high prices are needed to recoup the high R&D costs involved in bringing a drug to market. Having worked as a strategy consultant to all the major pharma companies in the early part of my career, I understand this business quite well. I will see if I can get a student or two to research this issue in the summer. I would like to estimate the results if the pharma industry was considered to be analogous to other appropriate industries