Rationed health care leads to a life of pain for some in UK

Daily Mail:

Hundreds of thousands of arthritis sufferers will be today condemned to "a lifetime of pain" by the health service rationing body, campaigners say.

Severe restrictions on the use of effective drugs will ruin the lives of patients with ankylosing spondylitis, they claim.

Only two out of three potential treatments are being approved for NHS use by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

And patients who fail to respond to one will not be allowed to switch to the other.

The two approved drugs are at least £5,000-a-year cheaper than the rejected one - but many patients say the more expensive drug has transformed their quality of life.

All three treatments have been available in Scotland - to Scottish patients only - for at least a year.

Around 200,000 people in the UK have been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis.

Sufferers of the arthritic condition - which affects the spine but can also flare up in joints, tendons and ligaments - include former England cricket captain Michael Atherton.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - commonly known as NICE - will let severely affected patients use the drugs adalimumab and etanercept.

But the rationing watchdog, which makes its decisions by balancing cost against effectiveness, has rejected the more expensive infliximab.

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This does not sound NICE for the unfortunate who must live in pain. This is the kind of information people like Paul Krugman at the NY Times remain willfully ignorant or at least hope that his readers are so he can keep up the pretense of superiority for rationed health care also known as socialized medicine. I close with my still unanswered question. If "free" health care is so wonderful why do all those Cubans risk their life to leave it behind?