Drugs for cancer and copayments

doi:10.1136/bmj.a527

Editorials

Drugs for cancer and copayments

Principles underpinning copayments must preserve equity, betransparent, and enhance knowledge on treatment outcomes

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The topic of how to pay for new and experimental drugs willnot go away. The government of the United Kingdom has announceda review of whether patients should be able to remain NHS patientsif they pay privately for such drugs. The current controversyexposes broader challenges, including how widely patients shouldmake additional copayments for NHS services, and how an "episodeof care" should be consistently defined.

The NHS has changed radically since its foundation in 1948.Major breakthroughs in therapeutic drugs and applied technologieshave offered new hope of prolonging life and improving qualityof life in people with serious disease. Although drugs for cancerhave hit the headlines, others that may have wider indicationsand applications are just around the corner. So should the NHSsimply allow copayments to deal with the problem?

In reality, other health systems signal problems with this.Copaymentsmean that—contrary to the . . . [Full text of this article]

Ilora Finlay, independent crossbench member of House of Lords and professor of palliative medicine¹^,2, Nigel Crisp, independent crossbench member of House of Lords and honorary professor ¹^,3

¹ House of Lords, Westminster, London SW1A 0PW, ² Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, ³ London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT

finlayi@parliament.uk

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