Kieran Lamb
Mark Lawson (A poisonous prescription, December 7) rightly identifies the threat to the basic principles of the NHS that allowing those who can afford it to pay for extra drug treatment poses. However we dispute that "the NHS could not have afforded this" (ie expenditure on expensive life-prolonging drugs). From the figures given in Professor Richards' review, Improving Access to Medicines for NHS Patients, we calculate that the cost of providing unapproved drugs would be £120m a year, which is a tiny proportion of the £110bn NHS budget.
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