Drug Company says: No Cure, No Charge

This is an interesting bit of news.  A drug company in the UK has agreed to refund the country’s National Health Service for the cost of its multiple myeloma drug Velcade (bortezomib) if it doesn’t cure the patient.

If a patient doesn’t respond to the drug, provided it is prescribed according to the company’s specifications there will be no charge.  Apparently Doctors should only use the drug if other drugs have failed, and the patient is not suitable for bone marrow transplantation.

A correspondent for the British Medical Journal commented: “The announcement was a sobering reminder that most medicines do not work in all patients.”

That correspondent is of course right because drugs certainly don’t work all the time, and even when they do they may suppress the symptoms but rarely cure the disease and often create other side effects that are sometimes serious enough to require treatment with other drugs and so the merry go around continues, and the patients quality of life steadily deteriorates.

Nonetheless, it is a bold move by that drug company and one that is commended.  I don’t think that we will see it become the norm in the pharmaceutical industry though as it would lead to multiple bankruptcies or else massive increases in the price of already overpriced drugs.