Despite Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, suggesting the NHS is Labour’s “comfort zone” at a speech in London on Saturday, 43 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “Theresa May and the Conservatives would do a better job than Jeremy Corbyn and Labour managing the NHS this winter”. Around 30 per cent agreed that Mr Corbyn and Labour would do a better job than the Tories, while 26 per cent responded “don’t know”.
Apparently the Tories are now more trusted on the NHS than Labour. Perhaps that’s why the BBC is blitzing us with so many tales of crisis in the NHS just now…and hardly blinking as ‘Big Pharma’ tried to blackmail the government into spending more on its drugs demanding £20 billion be pumped into the NHS or else….Normally ‘Big Pharma’ is the evil face of capitalism writ large…not now, during an election, as it demands more money for the NHS.
The Tories introduced the Cancer Drug Fund in 2010 to provide drugs that were not considered to be the most cost effective by NICE to patients. Today the BBC has been bombarding us with loud criticism of the fund from the Prof. Richard Sullivan who tells us that the fund is an expensive and maybe even dangerous waste of time…
The Cancer Drugs Fund in England was a “huge waste of money” and may have caused patients to suffer unnecessarily from the side effects of the drugs, according to UK researchers.
The fund ran from 2010 to 2016, costing £1.27bn, following an election promise made by the Conservatives to pay for cancer drugs the NHS was not funding.
The choice of words by Sullivan indicates this attack on the Tory policy is highly political….
‘A huge waste of money’…’patients suffering unnecessarily.
“policy on the hoof” because of the way it was announced.
“Populism doesn’t work when you are dealing with complex areas of policy like this. When it was launched it was not monitored properly. It was politically and intellectually lazy.”
‘Populism’? Hmmm…it has been the BBC itself that has helped drive politicians to take such measures. The BBC has relentlessly given a platform to campaigners who demand drugs that NICE would not approve and fund….the BBC has provided massive publicity and backing for these campaigns…and undoubtedly half those radio awards that Victoria Derbyshire got, who specialised in these sort of stories, were for such reports. The BBC has driven that ‘populism’.
You might also ask why this has suddenly made the news headlines….because this study by Sullivan was released in March this year….and only now making BBC headlines as an election is under way……any chance this is a bit of flagrant opportunism by Sullivan who knows that the BBC will lap this stuff up and give it an enormous profile?…Whatever you think of the CDF the criticism here is politically motivated, certainly by the BBC….
Do patient access schemes for high-cost cancer drugs deliver value to society?—lessons from the NHS Cancer Drugs Fund
Sullivan used to work for Cancer Research UK [‘populist’ pressure group?]….funny how back then cost effectiveness wasn’t so much an issue…as long as any small benefit of a drug could be shown then NICE should fund it…..
Disappointment over NICE’s ruling on kidney drugs
Experts have greeted with dismay apreliminary decision by the UK’s Na-tional Institute for Health and ClinicalExcellence (NICE) on new agents forthe treatment of renal cell carcinoma(RCC). NICE stated that: ‘Bevacizumab,sorafenib, sunitinib and temsirolimusare not recommended as treatment options for advanced and/or meta-static RCC.’People currently receiving the drugs should have the option to continue therapy until they and their clinicians consider it appropriate to stop, NICE said. The recommendations were made in an appraisal consultation document and, at the time of writing, comments were still being received. NICE stated that the recommendations ‘are preliminary and may change after consultation.’ In the meantime, 25 professors of cancer medicine complained about the decision in a letter to the national newspaper, the Sunday Times.‘We are dismayed at the decision by NICE on the rationing of drugs for patients with advanced kidney cancer,’ they wrote. ‘Once again, NICE has shown how poorly it assesses new cancer treatments. Its economic formulae are simply not suitable for addressing cost effectiveness in this area of medicine. Mean survivals obscure the fact the some patients will obtain prolonged benefit from these drugs. It is essential that NICE gets its sums right.’ Cancer Research UK also expressed concern, and called for a change in the way NICE reviews the value of drugs for rare diseases, where clinical benefitis proven but evidence is limited. Professor Peter Johnson, the charity’s chief clinician, said, ‘We are disappointed at NICE’s view that although these drugs are clinically effective,their high price means that they arenot considered to be value for moneyfor the National Health Service. These drugs have shown a small but definite improvement in an illness where there are few alternative treatments. If this decision stands it will be very frustrating for cancer patients and their clinicians . ‘Although we understand that NICE often has to make difficult decisions,in this case there is a clear separation between what NICE finds to be valuable treatment, and clinical and patient opinion. Action is needed to bring these two positions closer together.’
There’s a video of the BBC’s favourite one degree of separation Labour supporter, Giles the Rev, getting seriously Brilloed on DP about peacemaker Jezza.
He may need to head for more secure berths, from Today to Newsnight, to make such a pitch in future.
Enjoy.
Giles Fraser puzzles me. I was looking up his biography. He’s got impressive credentials including a PhD. Yet I never get the sense when he speaks that he has anything in the way of reasoning skills. It’s all emotional appeals, sanctimonious posturing, bromides, banalities and platitudes. Yet he’s always on the BBC. We seem to live in an age when we value verbal facility above every other intellectual skill especially the ability to argue in a logical, consistent and coherent manner.
Fraser fulfils a role for the BBC. He enables the Corporation’s cultural Marxists (who despise Christians) to claim they are not anti-Christian by wheeling him out every few days.
Of course, what he spouts is cultural Marxism so it’s a win-win for them.
Incidentally, don’t get taken in by contemporary PhDs. In many cases you get them for pandering to the prejudices of the very academics who have destroyed non-science subjects at our universities. the absolute last thing you would get a doctorate for in most of the humanities is original thinking!
Isn’t Fraser that person who says he supports Brexit and wants unlimited immigration as well.
I suppose the BBC can count him as a leaver. He’s their kind of leaver.
Giles Fraser is a typical case of LLDD – Lefty Logic Deficit Disorder.
Yes Giles Frazer and the “off button” on my wireless have a lot in common. Over 60 million people in this suffering country but al beeb bung the same old smug talking heads on week in week out. Lazy and limited exposure to ranges of views. Maybe I’ll put that in the current ofcom review – ah- but ofcom is limited too liberal ex BBC types too
Fraser just shows what piffle PhD examiners will accept before granting their debased qualifications.
The overwhelming Leftoid leaning of our ‘academics’ permits them to grant qualifications to entirely unworthy students based on their p-poor offerings of Marxist crap on Trotskyist bog paper.
Memo to the labour party and the BBC the NHS could have all the money it needs without any extra being extracted from the taxpayer if whatever god you follow the garden gnome corbyn ever got the keys to No 10 Downing Street. If it was not paying to support billions in PFI debt and a top heavy [so called] management thanks to tony bomber blair and the inept gordon brown 1997 to 2010. Now would anyone from the labour party, BBC, Al-Guardian or the left like to remind me which party blair and brown are members of……..Greens nope, UKIP nope, Conservatives nope, Lib Democrats nope, SNP nope though I think blair and brown might have been members of the joke that is the labour party
And can anyone remember similar outrage on the BBC about this, which was over ten times worse?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2040259/NHS-IT-project-failure-Labours-12bn-scheme-scrapped.html
Ministers are to axe Labour’s disastrous £12billion NHS computer scheme.
The Coalition will today announce it is putting a halt to years of scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money on a system that never worked.
It will cut its losses and ‘urgently’ dismantle the National Programme for IT – a monument to Whitehall folly during Labour’s 13 years in power.
The biggest civilian IT project of its kind in the world, it has already squandered at least £12.7billion. Some estimates put the cost far higher.
Analysts say the sum would have paid the salaries of more than 60,000 nurses for a decade.
Nah, me neither.
I would not trust a Labour “Government” to use a brush properly.
The NHS is awash with money. It has set aside £56,000,000,000 – that’s right, £56 billion – to pay ambulance-chasing lawyers for future claims.
Anna Raccoon is standing for election in Islington North, against Jeremy Corbyn, to draw attention to this scandalous waste of our money, only tolerated because of the combination of the compensation culture and worship of the NHS. Both, of course, encouraged by the bBBC.
http://stopsuingthenhs.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/background-information-as-to-why-i-am.html
Sir-Arthur
Then there is the billions spent by the NHS servicing the PFI debt and the top heavy management that blair and brown saddled the NHS with though the BBC never seems to mention those little factoids when discussing the NHS. Wonder how much that is costing the NHS ??