What Is A Cost?

Submitted by tonyplant on October 16, 2006 - 12:22.

There has been a lot of discussion about the NICE decision to block the prescription of various drugs in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease.

For one thing, they do not just benefit the patient but also the carer, which actually halves their true cost to £1.25 a day – or about the same as four cans of cat food.

If you look at the wider picture, take the drugs away, and carers will not be able to support their loved ones as long as they would choose to do so. Sufferers will be forced into care homes, which cost on average £500 a week, much sooner. Now that is not good value for money – compared with a week's worth of pills for £16.50.

The article quotes the conventional wisdom that carers save the country £57 billion. Caregiving exacts its own high-price toll. It is easy to demonise groups who don't agree with us but it is impossible to believe that the very smart, thoughtful and even altruistic (why else go in for a career in public service) people who work in the relevant government departments don't know this. They must know the cost of doing nothing. Presumably these people know all about how to appriase not only the financial costs and clinical benefits but the wider, human costs and those that are more indirect. Are we failing to have a conversation about the costs because we would not like the conclusions or the outcomes? If we can't be involved in these decisions and discussions, how else are we ever going to understand the decisions that are made on our behalf about rationing decisions and the treatment of ill or elderly people and their carers?

If various authorities believe that we need to be educated to understand the true meaning of a cost and everything that has to be included in it, then that information should be readily available, somewhere, even if it isn't front page news. Wasn't that supposed to be one of the promises of the internet? That all sorts of information could be disseminated without relying on the usual channels?

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project

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