Putting a price on someone’s life is and always will be a contentious issue, but in last night’s documentary, The Price of Life, filmmaker Adam Wishart guided us through the process of how NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) must do exactly that. And somewhat shockingly, we heard how NICE have a ceiling – or rather, had, before that ceiling increased recently – of £30,000 per person per extra year of life.

In this case, the subject of contention was the cancer drug Revlimid. It’s an expensive drug which, the manufacturer of it claims, can potentially increase the life expectancy of some patients by anything from months to a few years. For the individuals who would benefit from that, it is of course invaluable, however, with unprecedented access to the process of NICE’s decision making on whether to grant funding for this drug or not, we saw how difficult making the decision is.

However, one of the first things that occurred to me on hearing about the financial limits placed on the value of a year of life is that in the wake of the MPs expenses scandal being revealed in full, we know that millions of taxpayers’ pounds have been blithely paid out, seemingly without any checks on the validity of the claims, yet people were dying while awaiting approval by NICE for this drug. For some, approval came too late and one person who Wishart interviewed for the film, Julia, sadly died before she could take advantage of NICE’s ultimate decision to green light the drug. Read more & comment »