How much is your life worth?

According to NICE, around $22,750 every 6 months....

NICE is a funny way to refer to an organization whose job it is to approve/deny drugs and medical care to patients. It's a British government agency (part of the British National Health Service), and the acronym stands for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. They use cost-effectiveness data to come up with these figures!

Here are the main highlights:

"The institute, known as NICE, has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life.

"Any drug that provides an extra six months of good-quality life for £10,000 — about $15,150 — or less is automatically approved, while those that give six months for $22,750 or less might get approved. More expensive medicines have been approved only rarely. The spending limits represent the health institute’s best guess for how much the nation can afford."

The article talks about a couple where the husband the British health system refused to pay for his treatment for kidney cancer because the drug was too expensive. Hi wife, Joe Hardy, is quoted as saying, “Everybody should be allowed to have as much life as they can.”

The article is a little old - written in December of 2008. Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/health/03nice.html?scp=6&sq=british%20national%20health%20service&st=cse

We talked a little about culture in class at some point (or some class - they all seem to meld into one fairly easily) and how we're just not a society that's very accepting of death...how perhaps attitudes surrounding death need to change before we realize that maybe it's better for our loved ones to spend the last few months of their lives at home instead of in a hospital.

Yup I know - easier said than done...but maybe it would make dealing with death easier if we took only one small step and just talked about it more in our daily lives.

A very rambling post - I hope you found it somewhat useful! I'm always up for talking about death btw. And life. :)