Single-payer healthcare in UK bans US made Parkinson drug

Times:

Tens of thousands of Parkinson’s disease patients with a mixture of dementia and psychosis are being denied an effective drug that is available in the United States.

About 130,000 people in Britain have Parkinson’s, which erodes the brain’s control over body movements, leading to shaking and poor co-ordination.

In the long term, four out of five of these patients will also face mental decline when the disease spreads from the base of the brain to the areas that handle memory and planning.

As the condition worsens, three quarters of this group will also develop aspects of psychosis, such as paranoia, delusions or seeing, smelling or hearing things that are not really there.

Scientists in Britain have carried out a fresh analysis of the findings from their trial of a Parkinson’s medication and found that it is particularly potent in patients who have both dementia and psychosis.

The anti-psychotic pill, which is called pimavanserin but marketed in the US as Nuplazid, turned out to be twice as effective in those with severe cognitive impairment as in those without.
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The Europeans are even more paralyzed by bureaucracy than the US is when it comes to approval of drugs that manage a disease.  The single-payer system is part of the problem.  It is a warning sign about the push by Democrats to impose the same system on the US.