Cancer patients must be allowed to pay for non-NHS drugs in an attempt to head off a funding crisis in treatment of the disease, specialists said yesterday.
Under the current guidelines cancer sufferers in England who wish to use drugs that are not available free on the NHS can only pay for them if they are prepared to fund their entire treatment privately.
But some doctors want the rules to be relaxed in line with Scotland, where local health boards are willing to continue paying for other aspects of their care if patients pay for drugs privately.
Specialists are concerned that the taxpayer will not be able to afford the new generation of highly effective cancer drugs expected to be given licences in the next few years.
Many believe the current model of health funding will become unsustainable with treatments costing up to £50,000 becoming available, and some are calling for patients to be allowed to take out top-up insurance policies to cover drugs that the NHS cannot afford.
However the British Medical Association and the Department of Health argue this would lead to a “two-tier system” that would leave the less wealthy with a poorer standard of care.
The current situation varies across the country with different specialists and primary care trusts (PCTs) taking more flexible attitudes to the practice of “co-payment” than others.
Nick James, the professor of clinical oncology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and one of 180 specialist cancer doctors surveyed by the BBC, said: “I don’t see what right the NHS has to say ‘we are not going to let you have the care for which you have been paying for all your life because you have chosen to pay for something extra’. The drugs in the pipeline are going to cause even more pressure. I think politicians need to be honest and say this gap is going to be there and we need to look at ways of filling it.”
Prof Karol Sikora, the professor of Cancer Medicine at Imperial College, London, said: “There is a lack of political will to admit the NHS is beginning to fail patients in this area and we need an alternative structure in place. We have to allow co-payment.”
Dr Jesme Fox, the medical director of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, said she was appalled some people spend the last few months of their life in a desperate fight for NHS funding. “If they’re not going to be allowed to access drugs that improve survival by a few months, or improve their quality of life, we need to have an honest debate about how we’re going to have to fund these things.”
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has been criticised for ruling that a number of cancer drugs available to NHS patients in Scotland are “not cost-effective”.
